PESHAWAR – Another journalist, Hafeez ur Rehman, has been killed in Kohat, Pakistan in less than a month’s time.
Police said that unidentified gunmen killed the TV journalist on Sunday in the second such murder this month in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Attackers riding a motorcycle fired on 42-year-old Hafeez ur Rehman near his home on the outskirts of Kohat district.
“He was hit by three bullets and died on the spot,” Fazal Naeem, a police spokesman in Kohat, told AFP.
He is the second Pakistani journalist killed in less than a month. The killing came weeks after a similar attack, on newspaper journalist Zaman Mehsud, in the nearby town of Tank.
Rehman has been working as a journalist for 12 years. He currently worked at the Neo TV network and was also publisher of his own daily, ‘Asia’.
The motive behind the latest attack remains unclear as Rehman had not previously reported any threats against him.
But journalists in the tribal region are often targeted by militants.
The rebels have lately expressed unhappiness at the lack of coverage given to them by the Pakistani media, following a boycott order by the country’s powerful military establishment.
The killing was the fifth attack on members of the media in the past three months.
More than 70 Pakistani journalists and other media workers have lost their lives since 2001 while pursuing their duties, according to a UN report. The report ranked Pakistan as the world’s fifth worst country in terms of the number of unresolved cases of violence against journalists and criticized a widespread culture of impunity in the country.