Zagreb - Croatian publisher Ivo Pukanic and an executive in his company were killed in a blast in central Zagreb Thursday evening, local reports said. Pukanic and Niko Franjic, the president and marketing director of the NCL Media Group, were apparently killed by a powerful bomb placed under Pukanic's car, parked in its usual spot, the javno.hr portal said.
Police, who did not immediately confirm the identity of the victims, sealed off the area and were investigating, reports from the scene said.
Pukanic, 47, was the president of the NCL Media Group and founder, majority shareholder and long-time editor of the investigative weekly Nacional.
Launched in 1995, the magazine was critical of the then president Franjo Tudjman's heavy-handed regime, which often challenged its credibility and its usually anonymous sources.
Pukanic already survived an assassination attempt in April, when an unidentified gunman fired several shots at him, but missed.
The double assassination came less than three weeks after Prime Minister Ivo Sanader sacked the interior and justice ministers and the chief of police in the wake of the gangland-style murder of Ivana Hodak, daughter of a high-profile lawyer.
Sanader then pledged a firmer crackdown on Croatia's mighty organized crime network.
