A journalist in Pakistan, Siddique Mengal, has been killed in a bomb blast that rocked the Khuzdar district of Baluchistan province, in the Southwestern part of the country, on World Press Freedom Day.
The police in the country said the blast on Friday ripped through the car of the journalist, who until his death, was the district press club president and apparently the target, killing him and two passersby, while seven others sustained injuries, VOA reports.
Speaking to VOA, an area police officer, Ghulam Mustafa Rind, said that the slain journalist was driving slowly through a busy crossing when a motorcyclist attached a homemade magnetic bomb to his vehicle.
The office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, in a statement, “expressed deep sorrow and grief over the martyrdom” of the diseased.
As of the time of filing this report, no group has claimed responsibility for the journalist’s murder in the country’s province, where continuous attacks perpetuated mostly by ethnic Baluch insurgents have been recorded.
The province is also said to resident to militants loyal to the Islamic State terrorist group and the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, while security forces in the country are also alleged to have been carrying out attacks and enforced disappearances against critics of their counterinsurgency operations.
According to the RSF’s annual World Press Freedom Index, which assesses the level of freedom available to journalists and media outlets in various countries, released on Friday, Pakistan is ranked 152 in 2024, dropping from 150.
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