Pulitzer Prize-winning Reuters journalist Danish Siddiqui killed in Afghanistan
Kabul, Afghanistan — A Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer with the Reuters information company was killed Friday masking preventing between Afghan safety forces and the Taliban close to a border crossing with Pakistan, the media outlet reported, citing an Afghan military commander. Afghan forces had been preventing to retake Spin Boldak when Danish Siddiqui and a senior Afghan officer had been killed in Taliban crossfire, the official instructed Reuters.
The company reported that Siddiqui, an Indian nationwide, had been embedded with Afghan particular forces in Kandahar since this week.
“We’re urgently searching for extra data, working with authorities within the area,” Reuters president Michael Friedenberg and editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni stated in a press release. “Danish was an impressive journalist, a faithful husband and father, and a much-loved colleague. Our ideas are together with his household at this horrible time.”
Reuters stated Siddiqui had earlier reported being wounded within the arm by shrapnel whereas masking the preventing.
He was handled and had been recovering when Taliban fighters retreated from the preventing in Spin Boldak.
The company stated it was unable to independently confirm the small print.
Siddiqui was a part of a group to share the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Characteristic Pictures for documenting the Rohingya refugee disaster. The company stated he had labored for them since 2010, masking the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Rohingya refugees disaster, the Hong Kong protests and Nepal earthquakes.
Chargé d’Affaires Ross Wilson, the highest U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan, expressed condolences to Siddiqui’s household on Friday in a sequence of tweets. He referred to as it a “tragedy for #Afghanistan and the world that Danish is the most recent of 54 reporters who’ve been killed or murdered” within the nation.
As CBS Information correspondent Charlie D’Agata reported, Taliban militants have seized vital floor because the U.S. troop withdrawal started in earnest this 12 months, taking districts throughout the nation and encircling provincial capitals forward of what many worry may very well be a push to retake management of the nation by power when the American pullout is full on the finish of August. The rebel group claims to manage greater than 80% of Afghan territory.
Assaults on journalists and distinguished feminine Afghans have elevated over the past 12 months because the Taliban has reasserted itself. The ISIS department within the nation has additionally claimed the murders of a number of feminine journalists.
- What the Taliban’s advance means for Afghanistan’s future
Mujib Khalwatgar, the director of Nai, a media watchdog and advocacy group that promotes free speech in Afghanistan, instructed CBS Information early this 12 months that safety and monetary threats had compelled at the very least 10 Afghan radio stations to shut in 2020. Virtually a dozen journalists had been killed within the nation throughout 2020, in accordance with Nai.
“Now we have recorded at the very least 11 circumstances of homicide, 20 circumstances of accidents, 10 circumstances of kidnapping and over 30 circumstances of beatings in 2020,” Khalwatgar instructed CBS Information.
CBS Information’ Ahmad Mukhtar stated journalists have confronted fixed threats, intimidation, and violence — not solely from militant teams, however from state actors. Many Afghan journalists have been threatened or intimidated for his or her work by authorities safety businesses and civilian officers. Some have been attacked and overwhelmed.
Fewer than 1,000 American forces stay within the nation, and from August there are solely anticipated to be round 650 U.S. Marines left in Afghanistan after 20 years of warfare. They will be targeted on serving to to defend the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the principle worldwide airport.
