From AP via the NYT:

One journalist was shot and killed and another was left with a fractured skull after a beating in Russia's troubled North Caucasus, and police and co-workers said Wednesday the two men were likely targeted for their work.

The attacks on an Islamic TV reporter and an opposition newspaper editor are the latest violence to renew fears about the safety of journalists in Russia. A third journalist was shot by police on Sunday -- a killing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said represented ''a further deterioration of media freedom in Russia.''

In the North Caucasus city of Makhachkala, Islamic TV reporter Telman Alishaev died at a hospital Wednesday morning, one day after being shot by two men as he sat in his car, Interior Ministry spokesman Mark Tolchinsky said.

Alishaev, who hosted a religious-themed program in Dagestan, had produced documentaries and written extensively about Wahhabism -- a severe strain of Islam that is the main sect in Saudi Arabia, Shamil Guseinov, another Interior Ministry official, said.

Meanwhile, police in the North Caucasus city of Nalchik said Wednesday that three people, one in a mask, assaulted Miloslav Bitokov outside his home Tuesday evening, along with another man. Bitokov was hospitalized with skull injuries.

Colleagues at Bitokov's newspaper ''Gazeta Yuga'' said he had been threatened previously for publishing articles critical of local authorities.