2 radio journalists shot to death in Honduras, 5 dead in one month

2 journalists killed in Honduras, 5 this month

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Two journalists have been shot to death in eastern Honduras, bringing to five the number of media workers killed in the Central American country this month.

Radio journalists Jose Bayardo, 52, and Manuel de Jesus Juarez, 55, were riddled with bullets late Friday as they drove on a highway in the rural province of Olancho, prosecutor Wendy Caballero said Saturday.

Investigators have not yet identified a possible motive, Caballero said.

The two were killed after leaving the Excelsior radio station, where they had just broadcast a news show.

Three other journalists have been killed in March in Honduras, which is wracked by political divisions relating to a 2009 coup and common crime fueled by street gangs.

Nahum Palacios, director of a television station in Tocoa near the Caribbean coast, was intercepted by two other vehicles and shot to death March 14 as he drove home.

Three days earlier, popular radio journalist David Meza was ambushed and killed in the nearby northern city of La Ceiba.

Joseph Ochoa of Canal 51 television in the capital, Tegucigalpa, was killed March 1 in an attack on another journalist, Karol Cabrera, who was wounded. A previous attack on Cabrera in December killed her pregnant 16-year-old daughter.

None of the killings has been solved.

Alejandro Aguirre, president of the Inter American Press Association, has said the group is “worried about the very unfortunate, radical increase in violence against journalists” in the region.