MEXICO CITY – A crime reporter for the Mexican daily El Tiempo de Durango was abducted Monday as he was leaving his home and remains missing, authorities said.

Vladimir Antuna was grabbed around 10:00 a.m. by three people who apparently shoved him in a car and drove away with him.

The incident took place in Durango city, capital of the likenamed state, where drug cartels and other criminal organizations are very active.

“We know what is known everywhere, apparently that’s what happened, the authorities know it and they’re undertaking the investigations,” El Tiempo editor Saul Garcia told Efe.

Antuna had filed a complaint not long ago about “some kind of problem,” Garcia said. Press accounts indicated that it was because of death threats.

Garcia said that to be a journalist in Mexico has become a high-risk profession.

Several months ago another journalist was kidnapped and slain in an area along the border between Durango and neighboring Coahuila state that has seen a surge in drug-cartel violence in recent years.

Nine journalists have been slain in Mexico so far this year.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based watchdog group, said that 55 journalists have been slain in Mexico since the year 2000.

Mexico is the most dangerous country in the Americas for working as a journalist. EFE