Journalist murdered in Mexico, ninth of 2018

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico: Gunmen shot and killed a Mexican journalist as he left his home in the southern state of Chiapas, his newspaper said Friday, at least the ninth reporter murdered in the country this year.

Mexico is the second-deadliest country in the world for journalists after war-torn Syria, according to the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders

Mario Gomez, a reporter with El Heraldo de Chiapas, is the latest victim in a wave of violence against the press in Mexico, the second-deadliest country in the world for journalists after war-torn Syria, according to the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders.

"He had recently filed a complaint because he was receiving threats," a colleague at the paper told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The newspaper said Gomez, a general news correspondent in the town of Yajalon, was leaving for work when two unidentified men arrived and "murdered him in cold blood" with a series of shots to the abdomen.

Gomez, 35, was taken to the hospital but died of his wounds, it said.

"We call for an exhaustive investigation to find those responsible for this crime," his colleagues wrote in an editorial published on the newspaper's website.

The state prosecutor's office said in a statement it would "follow all lines of investigation to shed light on this reprehensible crime and bring those responsible to justice."