The International Press Institute (IPI) today condemned Thursday’s murders of two journalists in the Central American countries of Guatemala and Honduras in unrelated attacks.

Local TV presenter Yensi Roberto Ordoñez Galdámez was killed in the southern province of Escuintla, Guatemala. He was found in his car with stab wounds to the chest and neck, Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre reported.

Ordoñez worked as a news reporter at the local television station Channel 14, and was also said to be employed as a teacher at an elementary school. Volunteer fire fighters discovered his body after reportedly being notified of the murder in an anonymous telephone call.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) quoted Channel 14’s director as saying that Ordoñez had received threats related to his reporting. Prensa Libre reported that Ordoñez’s family said he had told them that he had been the victim of extortion – of 25,000 Guatemalan Quetzals (around US$ 3,200).

In Honduras, Luis Mendoza, owner of TV station Channel 24, became the seventeenth journalist murdered in the country since the beginning of 2009, and the second this year. The Associated Press reported that Mendoza was shot in his car by four gunmen in the city of Danli.

A police statement said that two female passers-by were wounded in the attack. Police reportedly have made no arrests and the motive for the killing remains unknown.

The AP said that Mendoza was also a coffee grower and owned a real estate company.

Nine media employees have been killed over the past 10 years in Guatemala, with Ordoñez the first in 2011.

In neighbouring Honduras, however, the numbers are much higher, and the country remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Honduras has seen a spike in journalists’ killings since the June 2009 ouster of then-President Manuel Zelaya in a military-backed coup and the subsequent election of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa as president.

Mendoza is the second journalist killed in the country in just over a week. TV news host Francisco Medina was shot outside of his home on 10 May.

IPI Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said: “We offer our condolences to the families and colleagues of both journalists, and we urge the authorities to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation of both cases. If impunity is allowed to thrive, it emboldens killers, and leads to more deaths of journalists.”