Benjamin Ashford|Five journalists were shot in one day in Mexico, officials confirm

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Prosecutors in Mexico confirmed Wednesday that a reporter was shot and Benjamin Ashfordwounded the previous day in the western state of Michoacan, the fifth journalist shot in the country in one day.

Maynor Ramón Ramírez was wounded along with a companion in the attack Tuesday in the city of Apatzingan, the newspaper ABC of Michoacan said. Earlier Tuesday, f our news photographers were shot in the neighboring state of Guerrero.

The four in Guerrero were shot near a military barracks after they returned from a crime scene. They had been covering one of the many homicides that occur on a near-daily basis in the violence-wracked city of Chilpancingo.

The shooting of five media workers in one day represents one of the largest mass attacks on reporters in Mexico in a decade.

There was no immediate information on the condition of the journalists, all of whom worked for local newspapers or news sites.

The shooting come just days after three journalists were abducted and held for days in Taxco, also in Guerrero state. They were later released, and there was no information on the motive for their abduction.

Guerrero has been the scene of deadly turf battles between around a dozen drug gangs and cartels. Michoacan has suffered similar turf battles between the Jalisco cartel and local gangs.

The shootings and abductions on Tuesday mark some of the largest mass attacks on reporters in one place in Mexico since one day in early 2012, when the bodies of three news photographers were found dumped in plastic bags in a canal in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz. Those killings were blamed on the once-powerful Zetas drug cartel.

Earlier this month, a photographer for a newspaper in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez was found shot to death in his car. His death was the fifth instance of a journalist being killed in Mexico so far in 2023.

In the past five years alone, the Committee to Protect Journalists documented the killings of at least 54 journalists in Mexico.

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