An Afghan journalist working for a local radio station was shot dead Friday in an ambush by gunmen in the central state of Ghor, according to officials, in the fifth crime targeting journalists in the troubled country during the past two months .
A spokesman for the provincial governor, Aref Aber, said that the editor of Sawt al-Ghor Radio in the name of God, Adel Imak, was killed on his way to the city of Firuz Koh, the capital of Ghor province.
And attacks targeting journalists, politicians, clerics and human rights defenders have increased in recent months, despite peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
No one has claimed responsibility for the journalist’s killing so far.
The Afghan Journalist Safety Committee confirmed the attack.
The journalist is about 30 years old and was married and has survived two assassination attempts in the last three months.
In November, unidentified attackers threw a grenade at his home. A month earlier, his car came under fire in Fayrouz Koh.
This comes after journalist Rahmatullah Nekzad was killed with a silencer pistol near his home while on his way to a nearby mosque in the eastern province of Ghazni on December 12th.
The National Directorate of Security, the main intelligence agency in Afghanistan, said late Thursday that two Taliban prisoners who were released before peace talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government had been arrested in connection with the killing of Nekzad.
About 5,000 Taliban prisoners were released last year as part of a long-overdue exchange deal that preceded the long-overdue peace talks that began on September 12.
The National Directorate of Security said that after their release, the two former Taliban prisoners joined a "terrorist group" in Ghazni that carried out several assassinations.
She explained that the two officers, who confessed to their crimes, also assassinated a judge and government employees. The Taliban denied being responsible for Nekzad´s death.
The killing of Nekzad came less than two weeks after the assassination of news anchor and activist Malalai Maywand, along with her driver, in the city of Jalalabad in an attack claimed by ISIS.
And last month, journalist Elias Dayi, who was working for Radio Freedom, was killed in a car bomb attack in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.
The same month also witnessed the killing of Yama Siyawash, a former TV presenter, in the explosion of an explosive device attached to his car near his home in Kabul.
The Taliban carried out several acts of violence in an attempt to gain more influence in the midst of peace talks with the Kabul government that began in September in Doha but stopped until early January.
