Third journalist killed in Mexico in month

A reporter who investigated drug gangs was found murdered in northern Mexico near the US border on Thursday, police said, the third journalist killed in the country this month.

Miroslava Breach, 54, of the newspapers La Jornada and Norte de Juarez, was found dead in her vehicle with multiple gunshot wounds to the head in the city of Chihuahua, police said in a statement.

Her suspected attackers were reported to have fled in a white sedan car, it said, without elaborating.

Breach had reported on organized crime, drug-trafficking and corruption during a 20-year career as a journalist in northern Mexico, where drug gangs fight bloody turf wars.

She had recently published a report about a conflict between leaders of the La Linea group, part of the powerful Juarez cartel.

Mexico ranks third in the world for the number of journalists killed, after Syria and Afghanistan, according to media rights group Reporters Without Borders.

It says 99 journalists were killed in Mexico between 2000 and 2016.

Journalist Cecilio Pineda was shot while in a hammock at a car wash in Guerrero state on March 3, the state's security department said.

Newspaper editor Ricardo Monlui Cabrera was shot dead on March 19 while leaving a restaurant with his wife and son in Veracruz state, the State Commission for the Care and Protection of Journalists told AFP.