Malta car bomb blast kills Panama Papers journo

A Maltese investigative journalist who exposed the island nation's links to offshore tax havens through the leaked Panama Papers was killed Monday when a bomb exploded in her car, the prime minister said.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53, had just driven away from her home in Mosta, a large town on Malta's main island, when the bomb went off, sending the vehicle's wreckage spiraling over a wall and into a field, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

Caruana Galizia's death resulted from a “barbaric attack” that also amounted to an assault on freedom of expression, Muscat said.

One of the topics she examined was the Maltese content in the Panama Papers leaked in 2016. She wrote that Muscat's wife, the country's energy minister and the government's chief-of-staff had offshore holdings in Panama to receive money from Azerbaijan, reported AP.

Muscat and his wife, Michelle, denied they had companies in Panama. Caruana Galizia filed a police report two weeks ago saying she was receiving threats, law enforcement officials told Malta news outlets on Monday.

A half hour before she was killed, she posted to her website an item about a libel claim the prime minister's chief of staff had brought against a former opposition over comments the latter made about corruption.

Meanwhile, son of Galizia accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of being "complicit" in her grisly killing.

In an emotional post on his Facebook page, the son accused Muscat of filling his office with crooks and creating a culture of impunity that had turned Malta into a "mafia island".

Her slaying drew swift denunciations of EU, reported AFP.

"We are horrified by the fact that a well known and respected Maltese journalist, Ms Daphne Caruana Galizia, lost her life yesterday (Monday) in what was seemingly a targeted attack," European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters.