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Colombian journalist shot and killed
A gunman killed a Colombian journalist who had received threats and reported on politicians linked to paramilitary death squads, police and the victim's family said on Saturday.
Clodomiro Castilla, an editor of El Pulso magazine and a reporter for local radio, was shot to death on Friday night as he read a book on the terrace of his home in Monteria city in the north of the Andean country.
Colombia's decades-long internal war has eased after President Alvaro Uribe sent troops to take back areas under control of rebels and paramilitaries. But journalists are still occasionally targeted by armed groups and cocaine traffickers.
"When the journalist was sitting reading a book on his terrace, he was approached by a gunman, who shot him several times and fled on a motorcycle," said Colonel Pedro Angelo Franco, a state police commander.
Castilla, 49, was killed in Cordoba State where in the 1980s paramilitary squads were formed by landowners, ranchers and drug traffickers to defend themselves against leftist rebels fighting the state.