Journalists shot in Afghanistan, one dead

A female Western journalist was shot dead and another wounded in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost on Friday, police said, on the eve of the country’s presidential election.

‘Two female journalists were shot this morning inside a district police headquarters, one has been killed, while the other is seriously wounded,’ Khost provincial spokesman Mobarez Mohammad Zadran told AFP.

Zadran and deputy Khost police chief Yaqub Mandozai said that the gunman was wearing police uniform.

The woman is the second Western journalist killed in Afghanistan during the election campaign, after Swedish journalist Nils Horner was shot dead in Kabul on March 11.

AFP’s senior Afghan reporter Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two of his three children were killed on March 20 when gunmen smuggled pistols into Kabul’s high-security Serena hotel and shot dead nine people including four foreigners.

Horner, 51, a veteran of Swedish national radio, was killed while researching a story about a January attack on a nearby restaurant which killed 21 people, including 13 foreigners.