Kampala — Jean Leonard Rugambage, a Rwandan editor of Umuvugizi, a vernacular newspaper that was closed by government has been shot dead.

Rwanda National police spokesperson, Eric Kayiranga told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that an assailant shot the acting editor of Umuvugizi as he drove through the gate of his home in the capital, Kigali, around 10 pm."At the moment, we are yet to establish who is involved in the killing and police are currently conducting investigations and we will provide information as it comes," the police spokesperson added.

The CPJ in a statement today has expressed shock and warned that the murder will add to the climate of uncertainty among independent journalists in Rwanda ahead of the August presidential election.

The murder of the Umuvugizi's acting editor is likely to further stir the debate on the state of freedom and democracy in Rwanda. Unconfirmed reports say that Rugambage was fired on by two men who then fled in a car.

Umuvigizi's former editor Jean Bosco Gasasira, who fled into exile following the closure of the newspaper in April this year, has accused the Kigali government of master-minding what he called an assassination of Rugambage who died in hospital after the shooting."I'm 100% sure it was the office of the National Security Services which shot him dead," he told US state-funded radio Voice of America.

Gasasira, said that Rugambage's assassination was as a result of a story by the Umuvugizi website which linked the Kigali government in the attempted assassination of Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa. Rwanda has denied accusations it was behind the shooting of Nyamwasa who went into exile this year after falling out with his erstwhile ally President Paul Kagame .

President Kagame has been praised for leading Rwanda from problems associated with the 1994 genocide in a short period of time but he is coming under increasing pressure over incidents on insecurity in his country.

Human rights groups have accused the Rwandan government of repressing independent media in the country, which Kigali denies.Allan Thompson, professor of journalism at Carleton University and editor of the book The Media and the Rwanda Genocide describes as "fragile," the situation of the media in Rwanda."The media will report about the ministers and the policies, but they won't criticise the president, Paul Kagame," Thompson said.

A report by the Paris-based media rights watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, this year named Rwanda among the world's worst press predators.In a recent interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, President Kagame said that human rights activists base their reports on views of a small group of people to judge the situation in the country.

The Rwanda government claims to be taking precaution to avoid another genocide which is said to have been partly orchestrated by the media. Rwanda's own RTLM radio station is said to have incited people to commit mass killings in which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.