(CNN) -- Two journalists kidnapped earlier this week by armed gunmen in Gomez Palacio, Mexico were freed by their captors unharmed Saturday, according to the state-run news agency Notimex.
Mulitmedios cameraman Javier Canales and Televisa Laguna photojournalist Alejandro Hernandez were released two days after the release of another hostage Hector Gordo, a journalist on the program Punto de Partida. The whereabouts of a fourth hostage Oscar Solis, a local newspaper reporter, are still unknown.
The journalists were kidnapped Monday while covering a protest by inmates and relatives at a local prison. The prison made news after Mexico's Attorney General's office revealed some of its guards let a squad of imprisoned hit men free to carry out a massacre of 17 people in the nearby town of Torreon.
This week, local residents along with Mexican and foreign journalists started a petition on the social media sites Facebook and Twitter to demand the journalist's release.
On Friday, the signal of one of Mexico's largest television networks faded to black for almost an hour as a symbolic protest of violence against journalists.
"We will not pretend that nothing is happening," said Denise Maerker, anchor of Televisa's "Punto de Partida" as she opened the show.
The protest Friday comes after the four journalists were kidnapped Monday while covering a riot at a prison in the northern state of Durango.
Earlier news reports indicated that an unidentified drug cartel has demanded coverage of videos it has made in exchange for releasing the four reporters, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement Wednesday.
The journalists were abducted in the Laguna region, which includes the state of Durango and parts of neighboring Coahuila state, Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights said in a statement Tuesday.
That area has been the scene of vicious fighting between the Zetas crime group and the Sinaloa cartel.
Violence against journalists has become increasingly common amid the escalating drug war, and critics have said the government does not do enough to hold criminals accountable.
CNN
