AP photographer killed, reporter hurt
Print Edition
AN Afghan police commander opened fire Friday on two Associated Press journalists, killing Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Anja Niedringhaus and wounding veteran correspondent Kathy Gannon, the first-known case of a security insider attacking journalists in Afghanistan.
The shooting was part of a surge in violence targeting foreigners in the run-up to yesterday’s presidential elections, a pivotal moment in Afghanistan’s troubled recent history that promises to be the nation’s first democratic transfer of power.
Niedringhaus, 48, who had covered conflict zones from the Balkans in the 1990s to Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, died instantly of her wounds.
Gannon, 60, who for many years was the news organization’s Afghanistan bureau chief and currently is a special correspondent for the region, was shot three times in the wrists and shoulder. After surgery, she was in stable condition and spoke to medical staff before being flown to Kabul.
Niedringhaus and Gannon had worked together repeatedly in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion. They often focused on the war’s impact on Afghan civilians and embedded several times with Afghan police and military.
Gannon, who had sources inside the Taliban leadership, was one of the few Western reporters allowed into Afghanistan during the militant group’s rule in the 1990s.
The two journalists were traveling in a convoy of election workers delivering ballots in the eastern city of Khost, under the protection of Afghan security forces. They were in own car with a translator and an AP Television News freelancer waiting for the convoy to move after arriving at the heavily guarded security forces base in eastern Afghanistan.
A unit commander, identified by authorities as Naqibullah, walked up to the car, yelled “Allahu Akbar” — God is Great — and fired on them in the back seat with his AK-47, said the AP Television freelancer. The officer then surrendered to the other police and was arrested.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied responsibility for Friday’s attack.
Khost Provincial Police Chief Faizullah Ghyrat said the 25-year-old attacker confessed to the shooting and told authorities he was from Parwan Province, northwest of Kabul, and was acting to avenge the deaths of family members in a NATO bombing there.
In a memo to staff, AP president Gary Pruitt remembered Niedringhaus as “spirited, intrepid and fearless, with a raucous laugh that we will always remember.”
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