Suspected right-wing gunmen on Friday shot and killed a journalist who worked for a communist weekly in a war-torn region of south-western Colombia, police and colleagues said.
Mr Flavio Bedoya, a correspondent for
Voz
, was shot in broad daylight by two men on a motorcycle wielding 9 mm pistols in the port city of Tumaco in Narino Province, a police spokesman said. The assailants sped off after the killing.
Mr Carlos Lozano, editor of Voz, said Mr Bedoya had received death threats after reporting on recent killings of peasants near Tumaco blamed on outlawed militias targeting leftist guerrillas and suspected civilian collaborators.
Colombia, locked in a 37-year-old war pitting Marxist guerrilla groups against the army and right-wing militias, is considered by press watch groups as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.
Nearly 40,000 civilians have been killed in the last decade of violence. Over the last 20 years, more than 100 reporters have died covering the Andean nation's long-running civil conflict and drug war.
Last year eight Colombian journalists were killed for their work and at least 13 fled the country after receiving death threats, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.