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Freelance BBC journalist killed in Afghanistan

By Andrew Pugh

A freelance journalist working for the BBC in Afghanistan was killed yesterday.

According to the BBC, Ahmed Omed Khpulwak died after an attack yesterday in which six suicide bombers stormed the governor of Uruzgan’s compound and other government offices in the provincial capital Tarin Kot.

The 25-year-old stringer joined the BBC on 1 May, 2008, and also worked for the Pajwak Afghan news agency. He was among 19 adults and children killed in the attack, according to the BBC report.

BBC global news director Peter Horrocks said yesterday: “The sympathies of the BBC and all of his colleagues go to Ahmed Omed’s family and friends. Only this morning he was reporting on BBC Pashto about another Taliban attack that happened last night.

“The BBC and the whole world are grateful to journalists like Ahmed Omed who courageously put their lives on the line to report from dangerous places.”

Khpulwak, who was recently married and has a three-month-old daughter, is the third BBC reporter to be killed in Afghanistan, according to the corporation. Merwais Jalil died in Kabul in the civil war in the 1990s and Abdul Samad Roohani was killed by unknown gunmen in Helmand province three years ago.

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