Thejournalist, who covered the police beat in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was found dead reportedly with gunshot wounds.

It was unclear whether Alberto Lopez Bello was attacked in retaliation for his work for El Imparcial, a newspaper in the city of Oaxaca, the state capital. The paper published a brief statement on Wednesday demanding a thorough investigation and saying that the killing “demonstrates the vulnerability to which communicators are exposed in their daily work of providing truthful and timely information to the citizenry.”

The Oaxacan state government said that Lopez's body was found along with the corpse of another man in Trinidad de Viguera, a city north of the Oaxacan capital. The news website Milenio reported that Lopez suffered gunshot wounds.

The second man was identified by state officials as Arturo Alejandro Franco Rojas. Milenio reported that Franco worked for a municipal police intelligence unit.

Source: Los Angeles Times