Unidentified men on Wednesday gunned down a Peruvian television presenter outside his home, making him the second journalist murdered in just over a week and the third to be killed in the country this year.

The Lima-based Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reported that José Oquendo Reyes, the director and presenter of BTV Channel 45 program “Sin Fronteras”, was shot five times by an unidentified individual on a motorbike.

IPI Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said: “Our condolences go out to the colleagues and family of Mr. Oquendo. We condemn this brutal slaying and we call on Peruvian authorities to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into his killing.”

The incident happened in Pueblo Nuevo, in the province of Chincha, Ica region in southern Peru. Oquendo’s son drove him to a local hospital, but the journalist died before receiving any treatment.

Oquendo’s colleagues told IPYS that the journalist had denounced the provincial mayor of Chincha, Lucio Juárez Ochoa, in his program and accused Juárez of wrongdoing in his administration.

Marina Juárez, the journalist’s widow, told IPYS that her husband, who was also a civil engineering works supervisor and who was a policeman until 1994, had not received any death threats.

Chincha’s Chief of Police, José Taysaco de la Cruz, said that investigations had already started and that a suspect had been detained.

Eight days before Oquendo’s murder, television journalist Pedro Flores Silva was shot dead by a hooded individual as he returned home from work in Nuevo Chimbote, in the Ancash region of northern Peru. Flores’ wife told local press that he had received death threats in recent months since he began criticising the district mayor of Comandante Noel.

According to IPI’s Death Watch, 35 journalists have now died in Latin America this year, making the region the deadliest in the world. Eleven of those deaths have come this month alone.