Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his condolences to the family of murdered British journalist Rupert Hamer, the presidential press service said on Monday.
The 39-year-old Sunday Mirror military correspondent was blown up on Saturday by a roadside bomb as he accompanied marines patrolling near the town of Nawa, in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. His colleague, 43-year-old photographer Philip Coburn, was seriously wounded in the blast.
The explosion also claimed lives of two officers, an American and an Afghan, and injured four U.S. marines.
Karzai said he highly appreciated the courage of the late journalist, whose reports covered the situation in the volatile Helmand province.
Hamer was the second Western journalist to be killed in Afghanistan since 2001, when the radical Islamic Taliban group was toppled in a U.S.-led campaign. The first, Michelle Lang from Canada, was killed on December 30 when her car hit a roadside bomb in the country's Kandahar Province, which neighbors Helmand. The explosion also claimed the lives of four Canadian soldiers.
In early December, U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in the first part of 2010 to defeat the Taliban.
KABUL, January 11 (RIA Novosti)
