Three Journalists Reported Killed in Afghanistan

Three foreign journalists were killed in a Taliban ambush Sunday in Afghanistan, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported today.

The Herald’s reporter in Afghanistan, Paul McGeough, said the three journalists killed--French radio reporter Johanne Sutton, another French reporter and a German man--fell from an armored personnel carrier when it was attacked. The second French journalist may have been Pierre Billaud, who was reported missing by Luxembourg-based radio station RTL.

According to other accounts, the reporters were riding in a convoy of armored vehicles and trucks that was ambushed after leaving the Northern Alliance’s military headquarters in Khoja Bahauddin, in Takhar province near the Tajikistan border.

McGeough said he was among six reporters who came under mortar and machine gun attack as they sat on the roof of a Northern Alliance armored personnel carrier.

The vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade that did not explode on impact but exploded when it hit the ground. The vehicle turned quickly, and three reporters fell off the roof.

“Three of us clung on for grim death and we survived,” he said.