Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has been killed in Kandahar while on a reporting assignment embedded with Afghan security forces, Afghan ambassador Farid Mamundzay said on Friday. “Deeply disturbed by the sad news of the killing of a friend, Danish Siddiqi in Kandahar last night. The Indian Journalist & winner of Pulitzer Prize was embedded with Afghan security forces. I met him 2 weeks ago before his departure to Kabul. Condolences to his family & Reuters,” Mamundzay tweeted.
Danish Siddiqui, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, had started his career as a television news correspondent and later switched to photojournalism. He was a photojournalist with international news agency Reuters and worked as a correspondent with the India Today Group from September 2008 to January 2010.In 2018, Danish Siddiqui and his colleague Adnan Abidi had won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for documenting the Rohingya Refugee Crisis as part of the Reuters team. Danish Siddiqui was covering the situation in Afghanistan's Kandahar amid heightened tension in the area. He had tagged along with the Afghan Special Forces on some missions, he informed via a tweet. He reportedly died when the Afghan Special Forces came under attack by Taliban. Danish Siddiqui's last story was about a mission in which Afghan commandos were trying to extract a wounded policeman trapped by Taliban insurgents on the outskirts of Kandahar.