A journalist covering an extortion epidemic in Peru was killed on Monday and two people were injured in a separate bomb attack on a prosecutor’s office also investigating racketeering, authorities said.

Gaston Medina, the owner and editor of a regional TV channel, was killed as he left his home in the south-central city of Ica, the National Association of Journalists (ANP) said. he said in a statementt.

The attackers shot him several times and he was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital, ANP adds.

“The ANP will remain vigilant so that this crime does not go unpunished,” the group said.

Medina reported, among other things, the growing problem of racketeering by criminal groups who threaten bus drivers, shopkeepers, hairdressers and even teachers if they don’t pay protection money.

Last year, transport companies organized numerous strikes due to the murders of drivers blamed on extortionists.

In a separate attack on Monday in the northwestern city of Trujillo, the epicenter of the extortion epidemic, two people were injured when a bomb exploded outside the prosecutor’s office.

CCTV footage showed a man on a motorcycle with a rucksack like those used by food deliverymen dropping it off outside the prosecutor’s office.

The bag exploded soon after.

State prosecutor Delia Espinoza blamed the attack on organized crime.

While extortion is a problem across Latin America, it has recently taken on alarming proportions in Peru — a phenomenon partly blamed on criminal groups such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, which operates in several Latin American countries.

In response to the killings of the bus drivers, the government last year declared a state of emergency in parts of the capital Lima and deployed the army.

In the first ten months of 2024, the police received more than 14,000 reports of extortion. But the problem is believed to be bigger because many victims do not report cases out of fear.

Multimillion-dollar profits make the search business more lucrative than drug and human trafficking, and perhaps even illegal mining, intelligence sources told AFP.

Wilmer Quispe, the lawyer for Medina, the slain journalist, told reporters that his client had made death threats before Monday’s attack.

In 2022, Medina arrived at work to find a bag full of trash and feces and a flower arrangement with an envelope containing a .38 caliber bullet, according to news reports and Interview by the Committee for the Protection of Journalists with a journalist. Medina told CPJ that inside the envelope was a handwritten note: “Gastón Medina, you will die.”

The threat came after the Medina Hosts morning news show reported on allegations of cost overruns in the purchase of equipment for a government hospital, he told CPJ. “I think the death threat is related to our reporting,” Medina said.

Peru was ranked 125th out of 180 countries by Reporters Without Borders Freedom index for 2024, a “dramatic decline” in two years.