Gunmen killed a Colombian journalist on a motorcycle

Colombian journalist Wilder Alfredo Cordoba is seen in an undated image posted to the Unión TV Facebook page. | Photo Credits: VOA

Gunmen on a motorbike shot dead a Colombian journalist, local authorities said Tuesday, the latest killing in the country which has seen a rise in murders of reporters.

The prosecutor's office wrote on Twitter that it had "learned of the death of the journalist and social leader Wilder Alfredo Cordoba" in the southwestern town of La Union.

La Union Mayor Fabian Echeverria told AFP that gunmen on the back of a motorbike had shot Cordoba, who was "around 40 years old," three times as he traveled in a rural area on Monday afternoon.

Cordoba was the director of a local television channel who "published information criticizing local government and about insecurity in the region on his Facebook page," the Colombian Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) wrote on Twitter.

The organization urged authorities to look into Cordoba's journalistic work "in connection with his murder."

Echeverria has offered a reward of $4,000 "for information leading to the identification and arrest" of those responsible.

The prosecutor's office said they had dispatched investigators to the crime scene.

According to FLIP, violence against journalists in the country has been on the rise, with nearly 770 falling victim to some form of aggression in 2021.

The International Press Institute said it was "alarmed and deeply saddened" by the fourth killing of a journalist in Colombia since August.

In October, a journalist was killed in a similar fashion by gunmen on a motorbike in the northern municipality of Montelibano.

Source: VOA News