MANILA:  A reporter who worked for a politician in the Philippine elections has been shot, police said Saturday, the latest attack on a journalist in a country regarded as one of the most dangerous for the media.

Police were guarding the hospital room of broadcaster Miguel Belen after he was ambushed late Friday, provincial police chief Jonathan Ablang told reporters by telephone. The severity of Belen`s injuries was not disclosed.

The 48-year-old reporter for DWEB radio was shot repeatedly by at least one of two suspects on a motorcycle as Belen rode home from work on another motorcycle, said Senior Superintendent Ablang.

"We`re checking his cellphone records to determine who had called him prior to the attack," Ablang said.

Belen is the second journalist to be attacked by gunmen since President Benigno Aquino took office on June 30. A provincial broadcaster was shot dead in the northern Philippines on July 3.

After switching sides last May, Belen worked for the campaign of a politician who won a seat in the House of Representatives, and police are investigating whether his political affiliations were a factor in the attack.

"He switched sides during the election so it would appear one party has an axe to grind," Ablang said, although stressing that police had no evidence with which to support such a theory.

The attack occurred on a remote road near the town of Nabua in the Bicol region, southeast of Manila.

At least 140 journalists have been killed in the Philippines since 1986, with 32 murdered last year in a massacre blamed on a political warlord.

BDST:1649 HRS, July 10, 2010