SIDDIQUI KILLED AFTER BEING LEFT BEHIND IN RETREAT, SAYS AFGHAN GEN
LONDON: As the Taliban’s campaign to reconquer Afghanistan was gathering pace in June, hundreds of people were dying in the fighting, and tens of thousands were fleeing. Danish Siddiqui, a 38-year-old star photojournalist for Reuters based in New Delhi, decided he wanted to help cover the story, telling a boss: “If we don’t go, who will?”
On Sunday, July 11, Siddiqui arrived at a base of the Afghan Special Forces in the southern city of Kandahar. There he embedded with a unit of several hundred elite commandos tasked with flushing out Taliban fighters who in the previous few weeks had been steadily capturing territory.
On Tuesday, July 13, Siddiqui joined a successful mission to rescue a policeman who was surrounded by insurgents. His convoy was returning when it came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). The Humvee he was travelling in was hit by one of the RPGs. Three other vehicles were destroyed. Siddiqui captured on video the flash and jolt as a grenade struck the side of his vehicle and the commandos up front drove through the barrage.
On July 16, Siddiqui and two Afghan commandos were killed in a Taliban attack while on another mission, a failed attempt to retake border town of Spin Boldak. While some details about his death remain unclear, enough information has emerged to give an outline of events. First reports indicated Siddiqui was killed in crossfire while trying to take photographs in the bazaar at Spin Boldak. But an examination of Siddiqui’s communications with Reuters and accounts from an Afghan Special Forces commander show that Siddiqui was first injured by shrapnel from a rocket. He was evacuated for treatment.