By Ingrid Bachmann
Attackers armed with assault rifles opened fire on the headquarters of El Debate in the city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, at dawn Sunday, Oct. 3, La Jornada reports. No injuries occurred. The building’s façade was shot at least 17 times, Milenio adds.
On Sept. 1, the offices of Noroeste newspaper in the same city were targeted in a similar attack. The El Debate chain's newspaper in Culiacán, Sinaloa, was also attacked in November 2008, and in February 2009 gunmen fired on the house of the editor of another of the chain's newspapers.
After Sunday’s attack, Gov. Jesús Aguilar Padilla said his administration would do everything possible to protect journalists’ work and guarantee press freedom. The state’s attorney general, Alfredo Higuera Bernal, ordered protection of the newspaper’s offices, El Universal and El Debate add.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
