Washington: Pulitzer Prize-winning Reuters chief photographer Danish Siddiqui, until now believed to have been killed in a shootout in Afghanistan, was “brutally murdered” by the Taliban.
According to a report published in a US-based magazine on Thursday, 38-year-old Danish Siddiqui, who was killed while covering a clash between Afghan soldiers and the Taliban in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar city, was actually killed after the Taliban verified his identity was killed in .
The Washington Examiner reported that Siddiqui traveled to the Spin Boldak area with an Afghan National Army team to cover the Afghan-Taliban conflicts. When they reached within a third of a mile of the customs post, the Taliban attack split the team, leaving the commander and some of the men separated from Siddiqui, who remained with three other Afghan soldiers.
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Siddiqui received shrapnel during this attack. The injured Siddiqui and his team hurriedly went to a local mosque to get first aid. As soon as news spread that a journalist was in the mosque, the Taliban allegedly launched an attack.
Local investigation suspects that the Taliban attacked the mosque because of Siddiqui’s presence as he was alive when the Taliban captured him.
The report said the Taliban confirmed Siddiqui’s identity and then killed him and his associates. The commander and the rest of his team died as they tried to save him.
“While a widely circulated public photo shows Siddiqui’s face unrecognizable, I reviewed other photographs and a video of Siddiqui’s body provided to me by a Government of India source, showing that the Taliban beat Siddiqui around the head and then pierced his body with bullets,” wrote author Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Photojournalist Danish Siddiqui’s body reached his home in New Delhi on 18 July and was cremated at Jamia Millia Islamia Cemetery.
Danish Siddiqui was revered by his colleagues and friends. He began his career as a television news correspondent, switched to photojournalism, and joined Reuters in 2010 as an intern.
He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 as part of the Reuters team for his coverage of the Rohingya crisis. He had extensively covered the Afghanistan conflict, the Hong Kong protests and other major events in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
(With inputs from news agency PTI)
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