KABUL-
A man dressed as a policeman shot two foreign female journalists in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, killing one and critically wounding the other, police, a doctor and a local official said.
The victim has been identified as Associated Press’s Photographer Anja Niedringhaus and the wounded journalist is the news agency’s Special Regional Correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan Kathy Gannon.
The attack took place on the eve of a presidential election that Taliban insurgents have pledged to disrupt through a campaign of bombings and assassinations.
The two journalists were in a remote small town on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan when the incident took place.
A spokesman for the governor of Khost province suggested that the assailant was actually a policeman.
“Naqibullah, a policeman in Tani district of Khost, opened fire on two foreign journalists. One was killed and one was wounded,” Mobariz Zadran told a foreign news agency.
Last month, a prominent Afghan journalist with the Agence France-Presse news agency was killed alongside eight other people when Taliban gunmen opened fire inside a heavily fortified luxury hotel in the centre of the capital, Kabul.
