Woman Wounded in Attack on Mexican Newspaper

Monterrey – Gunmen opened fire with assault rifles on the offices of a newspaper in the northern Mexican city of Torreon, wounding a receptionist, prosecutors said.

The gunmen fired more than 50 rounds Tuesday at the Noticias del Sol de la Laguna’s main entrance, the Coahuila state Attorney General’s Office said.

One of the newspaper’s receptionists, who is pregnant, was wounded in the arm and head, the AG’s office said.

A journalist at the newspaper received death threats after publishing photographs of decapitated victims of the Los Zetas drug cartel, Reporters Without Borders said last week.

“The Noticias del Sol de la Laguna newspaper immediately decided to stop covering crime after threats were made against one of its reporters, Javier Adame Gomez, on 20 May. The threats followed the publication of reports about an attack in Torreon in which eight people died,” the Paris-based press rights group, known by its French initials RSF, said.

The Coahuila AG’s office confirmed last week that grenades were fired at the El Zocalo newspaper in the border city of Piedras Negras, but no one was wounded in the attack.

Journalists in the border states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon have received death threats since the Gulf cartel went to war in March with Los Zetas, the criminal organization’s former armed wing.

“The drug cartels and Los Zetas, a paramilitary group that is in their pay, are the main instigators of the violence and threats against local journalists, who live in permanent fear. Last month, at least three local newspapers were the target of threats or reprisals that were directly linked to their coverage of organized crime,” RSF said in a statement released last Friday.

Several reporters covering a killing last Thursday were threatened by gunmen, who pointed their weapons at them and stole cameras and other equipment.

“Now commonplace, these threats against journalists are leading to more and more self-censorship. Whenever an article about the activities of organized crime is published in a regional newspaper, the author is putting his life, and the lives of his family and colleagues, in danger,” RSF said.

A total of 62 journalists, according to RSF, have been murdered since 2000 in Mexico, while 11 others have disappeared since 2003.