The Taliban has denied any role in the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, who was killed while covering a clash between the group and Afghan security forces in Kandahar. “We are not aware during whose firing the journalist was killed. We do not know how he died,” Taliban’s spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid told CNN-News18 on Friday.
“Any journalist entering the war zone should inform us. We will take proper care of that particular individual…We are sorry for Indian journalist Danish Siddiqui’s death,” he was quoted as saying.
Siddiqui was embedded with the Afghan Special Forces covering the ongoing crisis in the country. He was killed on Friday morning when Afghan commandos, attempting to retake a district surrounding a border crossing with Pakistan, came under Taliban fire, according to Reuters.
Siddiqui started his career as a television news correspondent. He switched to photojournalism and joined the international news agency Reuters as an intern in 2010. Siddiqui has since covered the Battle of Mosul (2016–17), the April 2015 Nepal earthquake, the refugee crisis arising from the Rohingya genocide, the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, the 2020 Delhi Riots, and the COVID-19 pandemic among other stories in South Asia, Middle East, and Europe.
In 2018, he became the first Indian alongside colleague Adnan Abidi to win the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography as part of the Photography staff of Reuters for documenting the Rohingya Refugee Crisis. A photograph he clicked during the 2020 Delhi Riots was featured as one of the defining photographs of 2020 by Reuters.
He was heading the Reuters Pictures team in India.
PTI reported that the Taliban has handed the body of Danish Siddiqui to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). India has been informed about the handing over of the body by the Taliban to ICRC and Indian authorities are working on bringing it back, it reported.
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