LA PAZ – Two Bolivian television reporters said that police from a special unit pursued and shot at their vehicle, and subsequently held them for three hours without explanation in the eastern province of Santa Cruz.

The national news director for the private PAT channel, Monica Salvatierra, said that the female journalists attacked were producers of a morning show on the network and were investigating the kidnapping of a child Thursday in the city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s largest.

She said that the incident occurred at 11:00 p.m. local time Thursday (0200 GMT Friday), when the reporters and the driver of the channel’s car were having a cold drink near the home of the kidnapped child.

According to Salvatierra, unidentified vehicles with darkened windows drove by the reporters twice and when they passed by a third time they shone lights on the press car and aimed a gun at them. The frightened journalists asked the driver to leave immediately.

According to the reporters’ story, police shot at the press car during the 10-minute chase until they finally blew out one of its tires and it came to a halt.

The vehicle’s 53-year-old driver was wounded in the leg and the reporters jumped out and tried to run away when the car stopped.

Shirley Flores, one of the victims of the aggression, said in an interview on PAT that the cops, who had their faces covered, grabbed the women by the hair, ordered them to lie face down, then kicked and insulted them.

“They told us they were the police, we told them we were from PAT. They insulted us, they kicked us, they didn’t believe us,” Flores said.

According to Salvatierra, the aggression stopped when locals came out and pleaded with the police to stop attacking the reporters.

The driver was taken to a hospital, while the journalists were taken to the offices of the Special Crime-Fighting Force, or Felcc, of Santa Cruz, where they were kept for three hours.

Salvatierra announced that the channel will file a complaint about the aggressions and requested an investigation of the incident.

For his part, the national police chief, Gen. Victor Hugo Escobar, said that, according to a preliminary report, the father of the kidnapped child confused the press vehicle for the auto that took his child away, so he called the police who decided to follow the car.

Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said that he is not “satisfied” with the preliminary report and has instructed a high-ranking police officer to go “immediately” to Santa Cruz to find out what happened and present an official report.

Rada expressed his concern for the aggression, but added that “some confusion surrounds the incident and what happened is not very clear.”

The police aggression was slammed by opposition and ruling-party politicians, by associations of journalists and by the United Nations representative in the country, Yoriko Yasukawa, who said that “such violence is absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances.”

Friday night another journalist from the same channel who covered the attack on the reporters said she was attacked by a man.

According to the reporter, the assailant came to her house and, after asking her if she worked for the PAT channel, tried to stab her in the face, but she managed to parry the attack with her hand, suffering a few cuts.

This is the third police aggression against journalists in less than three months. Last September a press team from the private Unitel channel was attacked by a police unit while it was covering the arrest of a landowner.