Reuters reporter Danis Sindiki was killed today while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan, an Afghan commander said.
Afghan special forces were fighting to retake the central market area of Spin Boldak when Sindiki and a senior Afghan officer were shot dead.
Sindiki has been a journalist with the Afghan Special Forces, based in the southern province of Kandahar, since the beginning of the week, reporting on clashes between Afghan commandos and Taliban fighters.
“We are urgently seeking more information in cooperation with the local authorities,” Reuters president Michael Friedenberg and Alessandra Galloni, director of the agency, said in a statement.
“Dannis was an excellent journalist, a devoted husband and father and a very dear colleague. “Our thoughts are with his family at this horrible time,” they clarified.
Sindiki told Reuters he had been injured in the shoulder by a shell earlier today as he reported on the clash.
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He was receiving medical treatment while recovering when Taliban fighters withdrew from the Spin Boldak conflict theater.
Sindiki was talking to shopkeepers when the Taliban launched another attack, the Afghan commander said.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the details of the new attack described by the Afghan army official, who asked not to be named before the Afghan Ministry of Defense announced.
Sindiki belonged to the agency’s photojournalist team that were awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for their photojournalism on the Rohingya refugee crisis.
A Reuters photographer since 2010, Sindiki’s work has covered a wide range of topics, from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Rohingya refugee crisis, the protests in Hong Kong and the earthquakes in Nepal.
Taliban fighters had occupied the border area on Wednesday, the second-largest border crossing with Pakistan and one of the most important targets achieved during their rapid advance into the country following the withdrawal of US troops.
