MEXICO CITY – Four reporters from the La Laguna region in northern Mexico are missing and “the authorities should take all measures that will allow them to be located,” the National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, said.

The reporters disappeared on Monday in La Laguna, a region that includes parts of Coahuila and Durango states.

A multimedia reporter, two Televisa cameramen from Gomez Palacio, a city in Durango, and a reporter for the Gomez Palacio daily El Vespertino are missing, the CNDH said, without providing the names of the journalists.

The multimedia reporter and the two cameramen were abducted around noon on Monday, while the print reporter was kidnapped at 11:00 p.m., the CNDH said.

The kidnappers are demanding that local media outlets broadcast videos that allegedly show Federal Police officers confessing that they worked for the Los Zetas drug cartel, the press reported.

Los Zetas, a band of Mexican special forces deserters turned hired guns, are engaged in a war with the Gulf drug cartel in several states in northern and northeastern Mexico, including Coahuila and Durango.

After several years as the armed wing of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas went into the drug business on their own account and now control several lucrative territories.

A fifth journalist was reported missing on Tuesday, but the reports have not been confirmed.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.

A total of 64 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000, according to CNDH figures, and 11 others have been reported missing since 2006.

Ten journalists have been murdered in Mexico this year and more than 70 have died in the past decade, the Fundalex press rights group says.

Journalists Marco Aurelio Martinez Tijerina and Guillermo Alcaraz Trejo were killed in separate incidents earlier this month in the northern states of Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon.

The slayings of Martinez and Alcaraz followed the murder on July 6 of a newspaper editor in the western state of Michoacan.

Two weeks ago, three Mexican reporters said they were attacked and beaten by soldiers when they tried to cover a police operation in a neighborhood in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Reporter Abisai Rubio and cameraman Ricardo Ramirez, both of Television Azteca, and Antonio Neftali Gomez, who works for Radio Voz de Nuevo Laredo, were attacked on July 13.

Neftali said he was knocked down by a soldier and beaten on the ground.

The soldiers damaged a video camera that belongs to TV Azteca, the reporters said.

The incident occurred in the Valles de Anahuac section of Nuevo Laredo, a city in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas across the border from Laredo, Texas.

The journalists said the soldiers continued to attack them even though they showed their press credentials. EFE