British reporter embedded with US troops killed

AN explosion in southern Afghanistan killed a British journalist, a US Marine and an Afghan soldier, Britain’s military said yesterday.

The Sunday Mirror’s defence correspondent Rupert Hamer, 39, and photographer Philip Coburn, 43, were accompanying a US Marine patrol on Saturday when the vehicle they were travelling in was hit by a makeshift bomb near the village of Nawa in Helmand, the Defence Ministry said.

Coburn and four marines were seriously wounded in the blast, the military said. British media said that Hamer was the first British journalist to have been killed in Afghanistan.

The past year has been particularly deadly for those fighting the war and those covering it. British and American casualties have surged as both countries poured more troops into the war.

Canadian journalist Michelle Lang died late last year while embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

An Afghan translator for The New York Times, Sultan Munadi, was killed in September when during a rescue operation.

Hamer’s death brings to 18 the number of reporters slain in Afghanistan since September 11, according to figures kept by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

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. Both were veterans of reporting from conflict zones.

It was Hamer’s fifth excursion to Afghanistan, while Coburn had previously reported from Afghanistan, Iraq and Rwanda. “Rupert believed that the only place to report a war was from the front line, and as our defence correspondent he wanted to be embedded with the US Marines at the start of their vital surge into southern Afghanistan,” Sunday Mirror Editor Tina Weaver said.

Hamer is survived by his wife Helen and three young children, the paper said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed the pair’s “courage, skill and dedication to reporting from the front line”, something he said ensured the world could “see and read” about what international forces were achieving in Afghanistan.