MEXICO CITY – A reporter and his journalist wife were gunned down in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, police told Efe.

Juan Francisco Rodriguez Rios, correspondent for the El Sol de Acapulco newspaper in the small town of Coyuca de Benitez, and his wife, Maria Elvira Hernandez Galeana, were killed Monday night inside the small Internet cafe they owned.

Two unidentified individuals entered the cafe and opened fire at close range on the couple, police said.

The 49-year-old Rodriguez Rios was also a local leader of the National Press Editors Union.

Rodriguez Rios was shot four times in the chest, while his 36-year-old wife was shot in the head.

The couple’s 18-year-old son had his back to the door and survived the attack, police said.

Authorities should spare no effort in bringing the journalists’ killers to justice, the National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, said.

Guerrero has been plagued by drug-related violence for years, and Coyuca de Benitez is near another state, Michoacan, considered to be violent.

Press rights group Reporters Without Borders condemned the murders of the husband-and-wife journalists.

“The level of violence against media personnel keeps on mounting in Mexico,” the Paris-based press rights group, known by its French initials RSF, said.

“Journalists are continually exposed to threats and physical attacks in the course of their work and live in fear of reprisals. We hope the investigators quickly identify those responsible for this double murder and their motives, and thereby help to end the impunity that prevails in most of these killings. Will the federal authorities now finally break their silence?” RSF said.

This is the second attack on journalists in Mexico in less than two weeks.

Gunmen opened fire with assault rifles on the offices of a newspaper in the northern Mexican city of Torreon on June 22, wounding a receptionist.

The gunmen fired more than 50 rounds at the Noticias del Sol de la Laguna’s main entrance, the Coahuila state Attorney General’s Office said.

One of the newspaper’s receptionists, who is pregnant, was wounded in the arm and head, the AG’s office said.

A journalist at the newspaper received death threats after publishing photographs of decapitated victims of the Los Zetas drug cartel, RSF said earlier this month.

A total of 64 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, while 11 others have gone missing since 2003. EFE