Wikileaks 'hacked ahead of secret US document release'

Wikileaks 'hacked ahead of secret US document release'


Wikileaks has previously released documents relating to Iraq and Afghanistan

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Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks says it is under attack from a computer-hacking operation, ahead of a release of secret US documents.



"We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack," it says on its Twitter feed.



It adds that several newspapers will go ahead and publish the documents released to them by Wikileaks even if the site goes down.



The US state department has said the release will put many lives at risk.



Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said the US authorities are afraid of being held to account.



Wikileaks has said the release of classified messages sent by US embassies will be bigger than past releases on Afghanistan and Iraq.



The newspapers set to publish details of the US embassy cables include Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde, Germany's Speigel, the UK's Guardian and the New York Times.



The latest leak is expected to include documents covering US dealings and diplomats' confidential views of countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, Russia and Turkey.

"The material that we are about to release covers essentially every major issue in every country in the world," Mr Assange told reporters by video link on Sunday.



A journalist with Britain's Guardian newspaper, which has been working with Wikileaks on publishing the files, said they would include an unflattering US assessment of UK PM David Cameron.



No-one has been charged with passing the diplomatic files to the website but suspicion has fallen on US Army private Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier leak of classified US documents to Mr Assange's organisation. "