LONDON: An explosion outside a small village in southern Afghanistan claimed the life of a veteran British war correspondent, officials said Sunday. It was the British media’s first casualty in the conflict.
The blast, which also killed a US and an Afghan soldier with whom Sunday Mirror journalist Rupert Hamer was traveling, brings the number of reporters who have died in Afghanistan since the Sept. 11 attacks to 18, according to figures kept by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
“Tragically it was a matter of time,” former British forces commander Col. Richard Kemp told Sky News television. “Our journalists, the same as other journalists, our British journalists deploying on operations with forces in Afghanistan or Iraq face exactly the same risks as our soldiers face out there.”
Hamer, 39, and photographer Philip Coburn, 43, were accompanying a US Marine patrol Saturday when their vehicle was hit by a makeshift bomb near the village of Nawa in Helmand, the Defense Ministry said.
An US Marine was also killed in the blast, the ministry said, as was an Afghan solider. Coburn was seriously wounded in the explosion but remains in stable condition, the military said. Four US Marines were also left badly hurt.
The Sunday Mirror said Hamer and Coburn had flown to the region on New Year’s Eve and were embedded with the American military.
Their trip was to have lasted for a month, the paper said.
