Indian journalist Danish Siddiqui, who has been reporting from Afghanistan the past few days, was killed in Spin Boldak district, Kandahar, reports say. Danish Siddiqui was working with Reuters as a photo journalist.
Danish Siddiqui, a Reuters photojournalist, was killed in clashes in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar, sources confirmed.
— TOLOnews (@TOLOnews) July 16, 2021
The Indian journalist was covering the situation in Kandahar over the last few days. pic.twitter.com/VdvIRGAEa3
Only on the 13th of July, Siddiqui had tweeted how he had narrowly escaped disaster after the Humvee he was traveling in was attacked by Taliban forces. He was traveling with Afghan forces, with whom he was attached to the past few days.
The Humvee in which I was travelling with other special forces was also targeted by at least 3 RPG rounds and other weapons. I was lucky to be safe and capture the visual of one of the rockets hitting the armour plate overhead. pic.twitter.com/wipJmmtupp
— Danish Siddiqui (@dansiddiqui) July 13, 2021
Siddiqui was at the centre of the controversy during the peak of the second wave of Covid-19 in India when insensitive photographs of funeral pyres were splashed across the media.
The photographs were widely criticized for being insensitive.
However, he had also received international praise for the photographs.
Siddiqui was also awarded the Pulitzer as part of the Reuters team for the coverage of the Rohingya crisis. The Vice-President of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, had stated on Thursday that they had been warned by Pakistan that any attempt to repel Taliban from the Spin Boldak area, where Siddiqui was killed, would incur action by the Pakistani Air Force.
With US withdrawal from the country, the Taliban has been capturing more and more area and is on the verge of taking complete control of Afghanistan.
