KARACHI - A technician of private TV channel was shot dead in southern port city of Karachi on Tuesday.
The same day, a journalist belonging to state television, PTV, was injured by firing in Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Abdul Azam, who belongs to Khyber Agency, was attacked in Hayatabad town of Peshawar. He received three bullet wounds and was taken to Hayatabad Medical Complex. In Karachi, gunmen opened fire on a Geo TV van in the Bahadurabad area in the eastern part of the city while the TV crew was on an assignment.
"The technician has died and the driver is injured in the attack," police officer Irfan Asif told AFP. An official from Geo TV confirmed the death of the technician, named as Arshad Ali Jaffery. Senior police officer Javed Jiskani said the police were gathering evidence from the area where the attack took place and had launched investigation.
Journalist unions reacted immediately to the attack on the Geo TV staff, calling for greater security for media personnel and the speedy arrest of the attackers. Last year, one of Geo's leading anchors Hamid Mir was attacked in Karachi, surviving with multiple gunshot wounds in an incident.
In 2011, gunmen shot dead Karachi-based Geo News reporter Wali Khan Babar after he filed a report on criminal gangs’ warfare in the city. Reporters without Borders, a media rights watchdog, says there has been a marked increase since 2014 in media freedom violations by government officials and various political factions in Pakistan. Paramilitary forces began a sweeping crackdown on alleged militants in the city in 2013, which has led to substantial drop in overall levels of violence.