Journalist shot at in Guatemala

Guatemala City, Aug 14 (IANS/EFE) Journalist Fredy Rodas was shot at as he was going home on Guatemala's south coast and is recovering at a hospital in this capital, doctors said Tuesday.

The attack occurred Monday night in the city of Mazatenango.

Rodas, a journalist for Sonora Es La Noticia radio and a collaborator with several other media outlets, was hit by at least three bullets, one of which wounded his right eye, Jose Arriola said at Roosevelt Hospital.

The patient is in stable condition, Arriola said.

The motive of the attack is as yet unknown, though Rodas has said he received a threat on the telephone, but gave no further details.

"We are hurt, distressed and dismayed" by the attact on Rodas, the director of Sonora Es La Noticia radio, Arnulfo Agustin Guzman, said, after visiting the victim in hospital and urging the authorities to find those responsible.

On Aug 6 the journalist Luis de Jesus Lima was gunned down in the eastern province of Zacapa, where he directed a radio program.

Guatemala is among a number of countries, including Haiti, India, Mexico, Nigeria and Yemen, where journalists find themselves at increasing risk, according to a report released last month by the Press Emblem Campaign.

Lima's murder brings to three the number of journalists slain in Guatemala so far this year.

--IANS/EFE

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