Danish Siddiqui, a Reuters journalist, was killed on Friday while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan.
“We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region. 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,” Reuters president Michael Friedenberg and editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement.
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Expressing regret over the Reuters photojournalist’s death in Kandahar, the Taliban’s spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said, “We are not aware during whose firing the journalist was killed. We do not know how he died.”
The Taliban has said it does know how Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed and expressed regret over the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s death in Afghanistan’s Kandahar during clashes between its fighters and Afghan forces.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed on Friday during clashes between Taliban fighters and Afghanistan’s security forces near a border crossing with Pakistan, Reuters cited an Afghan commander as saying.
“We are sorry for Indian journalist Danish Siddiqui’s death. We regret that journalists are entering war zone without an intimation to us,” Mujahid added.
The Afghan Ambassador to India, Farid Mamundzay, confirmed the news of his death on Friday.
The photojournalist was killed in a Taliban strike when he was on a reporting trip along with Afghan security personnel.
Siddiqui had been regularly posting photographs from Afghanistan on social media as the Taliban is rapidly gaining territory at a time when the US and its allies are retreating.
Danish won a number of awards for his work inclosing a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his work as part of a seven-member Reuters team that documented the violence faced by Myanmar’s minority Rohingya community and their mass exodus to Bangladesh beginning August 2017. The photograph for which he was given the Pulitzer shows an refugee woman sinking to her knees on the shore of the Bay of Bengal, fatigued and forlorn. In the distance, a group of men unload the meagre belongings that they have carried with them in a small boat as they journeyed from their homes in Myanmar to Bangladesh for safety.
His last interaction with the students of MCRC was on April 26, 2021 when Sohail Akbar invited him to speak to the students of Convergent Journalism. “It was at the deadly peak of the COVID-19 second surge and Danish was very busy” remembers Sohail Akbar “but as always, he made time for the students of the MCRC”.
“Any journalist entering the war zone should inform us. We will take proper care of that particular individual,” the Taliban’s spokesperson told CNN-News18.
As a photojournalist, Danish has covered several important stories in Asia, Middle East and Europe. Some of his works include covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rohingya refugees crisis, Hong Kong protests, Nepal earthquakes, Mass Games in North Korea and living conditions of asylum seekers in Switzerland. He has also produced a photo series on Muslim converts in England. His work has been widely published in scores of magazines, newspapers, slideshows and galleries – including National Geographic Magazine, New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Forbes, Newsweek, NPR, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Bangkok Post, Sydney Morning Herald, The LA Times, Boston Globe, The Globe and Mail, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Stern, Berliner Zeitung, The Independent, The Telegraph, Gulf News, Libèration and various other publications.