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But the Taliban launched another attack as Siddiqui spoke to traders in the area, the Afghan commander told Reuters. The media could not independently verify details of the second clash that resulted in Siddiqui’s death.
Earlier this week, Siddiqui posted a heartbreaking Twitter thread documenting his time with the Afghan forces as they embarked on a rescue mission in Kandahar, in an attempt to extract a wounded policeman trapped by Taliban fighters.
Among the photos Siddiqui included in his messages was a brief video capturing the moment a Taliban-fired rocket made contact with the Humvee in which he and Afghan forces were traveling to the extraction point. Their mission was ultimately successful.
One of Siddiqui’s last photos showed him lying on a patch of green grass with his eyes closed as two Afghan soldiers sat cross-legged nearby. “I had a 15-minute break for nearly 15 hours of consecutive missions” he wrote in the accompanying tweet.
Siddiqui joined Retuers in 2010 and was part of his team of photojournalists who won the Pulitzer Prize for background photography in 2018 for their work on Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar.
In a statement, Reuters chairman Michael Friedenberg and editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni said they were “urgently seeking more information” on Siddiqui’s death and “working with authorities in the region.”
“The Danish was an exceptional journalist, a devoted husband and father and a much appreciated colleague,” said Friedenberg and Galloni. “Our hearts are with his family at this terrible time.”
On Wednesday, the Taliban said it had seized the strategic border post where Siddiqui was killed, after already claiming last Friday that it had taken control of 85 percent of Afghan territory.
Just last week, the Islamic fundamentalist group took control of nearly 10 percent of Afghanistan, according to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and now controls 195 of the country’s 407 districts, while challenging 129 others. .
The United States is in the final stages of a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, with General Scott Miller – the top U.S. commander there – leaving the country on Monday. President Joe Biden announced last Thursday that the US mission in Afghanistan will end on August 31, ahead of the self-imposed September 11 withdrawal deadline.
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