SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan: Reuters journalist Danish Siddiqui was killed on Friday while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan, an Afghan commander said.
Afghan special forces had been fighting to retake the main market area of Spin Boldak when Siddiqui and a senior Afghan officer were killed in what they described as Taliban crossfire, the official told Reuters.
Siddiqui had been embedded as a journalist since earlier this week with Afghan special forces based in the southern province of Kandahar and had been reporting on fighting between Afghan commandos and Taliban fighters.
“We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region,” Reuters President Michael Friedenberg and Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement.
“Danish was an outstanding journalist, a devoted husband and father, and a much-loved colleague. Our thoughts are with his family at this terrible time.”
Siddiqui told Reuters he had been wounded in the arm by shrapnel earlier on Friday while reporting on the clash. He was treated and had been recovering when Taliban fighters retreated from the fighting in Spin Boldak.
Siddiqui had been talking to shopkeepers when the Taliban attacked again, the Afghan commander said.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the details of the renewed fighting described by the Afghan military official, who asked not to be identified before Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry made a statement.
Siddiqui was part of the Reuters photography team to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis.
A Reuters photographer since 2010, Siddiqui’s work spanned covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Rohingya refugees crisis, the Hong Kong protests and Nepal earthquakes.
Taliban fighters had captured the border area on Wednesday, the second-largest crossing on the border with Pakistan and one of the most important objectives they have achieved during a rapid advance across the country as US forces pull out.
Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui killed covering clash between Afghan forces, Taliban
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Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui killed covering clash between Afghan forces, Taliban
- Siddiqui was embedded since earlier this week with Afghan special forces in Kandahar covering fighting between Afghan commandos and Taliban fighters.
- He was part of the Reuters photography team to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis
Russia says seized a dozen Ukrainian villages in February
MOSCPW: Russia’s army chief Valery Gerasimov visited Moscow’s troops in Ukraine and said the Kremlin’s forces seized a dozen eastern villages in February, the defense ministry said Sunday.
Gerasimov visit comes days before US-mediated talks with Kyiv in Geneva on ending almost four years of war and ahead of the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale offensive against Ukraine.
“In two weeks of February, despite severe winter conditions, combined forces and military units of the joint task force liberated 12 settlements,” Gerasimov said.
AFP could not independently verify these claims.
The pace of Moscow’s advance picked up in Autumn, but Russia has not reached its goal to seize the Donetsk region in four years of war.
Russia demands that Kyiv withdraw from the Donetsk region for any deal to end the conflict — terms unacceptable to Ukraine.
Gerasimov said Moscow’s troops were moving in the direction of Sloviansk — an industrial hub that briefly fell to pro-Russian separatists in 2014 and which has been under frequent Russian attack.
Moscow’s forces are around 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the city.
Moscow claims the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions as its own.
But it has also advanced into other Ukrainian regions.
Gerasimov said Russia was “expanding a security zone” in border areas in the northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv region, where it controls pockets of territory.
The army chief also said he would discuss with officers “further actions in the Dnipropetrovsk direction.”
Russian forces crossed into the Dnipropetrovsk region last summer in their push westwards — but the Kremlin has never laid an official claim on the region.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Moscow is intent on seizing the whole of the Donetsk region by force if diplomacy fails.
