Reporter, Marine Die in Afghan Blast

Reporter, Marine Die in Afghan Blast
By ROD NORDLAND
Copyright by Reuters
Published: January 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/world/asia/11afghan.html?ref=global-home


KABUL — An embedded British journalist and an American Marine accompanying him were killed in Ghazni province when the vehicle they were traveling in struck a roadside bomb, the British Ministry of Defense announced Sunday.

The journalist killed Saturday was Rupert Hamer, a defense correspondent from the British newspaper the Sunday Mirror who was accompanying a U.S. Marine patrol near the village of Nawa. The American soldier was not identified pending notification of next of kin. A photographer traveling with Mr. Hamer, Philip Coburn, was seriously wounded but was in stable condition.

Mr. Hamer was the first British journalist killed while covering the Afghanistan conflict in recent years, but the second Western journalist to die in the past two weeks. A Canadian journalist, Michelle Lang, died along with four Canadian soldiers in Kandahar province on Dec. 30.

In Saturday’s incident, an Afghan soldier was also killed in the blast, and four U.S. Marines were wounded as well, according to the British ministry statement.

In Tarinkot, the capital of Uruzgan province in western Afghanistan, three Afghan aid workers employed by a German relief agency, JTZ, when the pickup truck they were in struck a landmine, provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat said.

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar.