Killing of Pakistani journalist in Kenya was ‘targeted’ attack, minister says
A Pakistani journalist was abducted, beaten and killed in a village in Kenya’s semiautonomous region of the capital, Nairobi, on Thursday by armed masked gunmen on a motorcycle, officials said, with the minister of information’s office saying he was “targeted.”
A Pakistani journalist was abducted, beaten and killed in a village in Kenya’s semiautonomous region of the capital, Nairobi, on Thursday by armed masked gunmen on a motorcycle, officials said, with the minister of information’s office saying he was “targeted.”
The kidnapping and murder took place around 8 p.m. local time, Nairobi time. The journalist, Waqas Rasheed Bhatti, 46, a resident of Lahore, Pakistan, was working for the private news agency Geo News, Geo said in a statement.
The murder was an assassination attempt, the office said, with Rasheed being the third in three months in Kenya to be killed by militants. In the previous two years, an Associated Press reporter was kidnapped in Nairobi, and a foreign correspondent was killed in the capital in 2013.
“This is a targeted murder and an assassination, where the motive behind this one killing is entirely unrelated to journalist coverage,” said RNZ News, the independent national news agency, in a statement, adding that it received word of the kidnappings around 5.30 p.m. local time.
“The killing was an attack on Rasheed Bhatti’s life,” said a statement by the ministry of information.
“To quote the minister of information, if it is confirmed that Rasheed was targeted then it is a targeted attack. If it is not confirmed, it is a targeted killing.”
Nairobi police have not confirmed the identities of the kidnappers, and said they were trying to find out who they worked for. Police spokesman Mwania Muigai said police have no evidence that the attackers work with Kenyan security agencies.
“We have not identified them yet, and the suspects remain at large,” he said.
Police have issued a countrywide alert asking
