British journalist killed in Afghanistan explosion

LONDON - A reporter from the British weekly Sunday Mirror was among three people killed in a bomb explosion that targetted a military patrol in Afghanistan, British media reported Sunday.

Rupert Hamer was a defence correspondent “embedded” with the US Marines in Afghanistan, along with a photographer Philip Coburn, who was seriously injured in the blast, the BBC reported, quoting Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

A US and an African soldier were also killed and four US soldiers seriously injured in the roadside bomb near the district of Nawa in the country’s south-east.

Prior to Sunday’s announcement, Reporters Without Borders had stated that a total of 19 journalists, 11 of them foreign, had been killed in Afghanistan since the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.