• Leyner Montero and Dilia Contreras were driving before dawn Sunday when men on motorcycles shot at their vehicle.
• Colombia is the second most deadly country for journalists in Latin America after Mexico.
• Authorities said they are still not certain if the attack was linked to their journalistic work.

Police in Colombia are looking into the shooting deaths of two journalists who were returning from a county fair when they were killed. According to authorities, as Leyner Montero and Dilia Contreras entered the northern Colombian town of Fundacion early on Sunday, individuals on motorcycles opened fire at their car.

According to the authorities, they are still unsure if the incident was related to their journalistic activity. In Fundacion, Montero managed a community radio station that broadcast regional news and cultural events, and Contreras managed a regional news website and had just started working as a press representative for the municipality of Fundacion. Both journalists had attended the county fair over the weekend, according to the police, when Montero was allegedly involved in a fight.

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After Mexico, Colombia is the region in which journalists are killed most frequently. Since 2016, when the government of the country reached a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that put an end to five decades of war, nine journalists have been killed in Colombia because of their job, according to the press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders.

Colombia experienced a twofold increase in journalist murders in the 1990s and early 2000s, and attacks on the media included the car bombing of the offices of a major daily.

The murder of Contreras and Montero, according to Juan Pappier, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, was “one of the worst attacks” against Colombian journalists in recent memory.

It serves as a bitter reminder that security and protection measures require improvement, according to Pappier.

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