Reuters photographer killed as Afghan forces fight Taliban

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghan government forces battled Friday to retake a border crossing with Pakistan from Taliban insurgents, and the Reuters news agency said one of its photographers was killed in the area.

The Taliban had overrun the Spin Boldak crossing earlier in the week. On Friday, witnesses on the Pakistan side of the border said they saw intense fighting and reported seeing bodies.

Reuters said Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Danish Siddiqui, who was embedded with the Afghan special forces, was killed as the commando unit sought to recapture Spin Boldak.

The agency said Siddiqui and a senior Afghan officer were killed in what they described as Taliban crossfire. “We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region,” Reuters President Michael Friedenberg and Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement.

Siddiqui was an Indian national. Afghanistan’s ambassador to India, Farid Mamundzay, tweeted his condolences.

The Taliban have overrun dozens of districts in Afghanistan since the start of the final phase of the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops, after a 20-year military presence. The U.S. says its withdrawal is 95 percent complete.

The fighting at Spin Boldak was confirmed by Fawad Aman, Afghanistan’s deputy defense ministry spokesman. The Associated Press also obtained footage of fighters, apparently Taliban, receiving treatment in a hospital in the Pakistani border town of Chaman.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are fraught with suspicion. Afghanistan routinely accuses Pakistan of giving safe haven to Afghan Taliban, whose leadership is headquartered in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan provincial capital of Quetta. The Chaman border crossing opposite Spin Boldak is also in Baluchistan province.

Afghanistan and the United States have criticized Pakistan in the past for allowing Taliban fighters to cross into Pakistan to receive medical treatment. Nearly 2 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan, having fled decades of war in their homeland.

Pakistan has used its influence over the Taliban to press the religious movement into talks with the U.S. and the Afghan government.

In the latest round of accusations, Afghanistan’s vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, tweeted that Pakistan’s air force warned the Afghan army and air force against trying to dislodge Taliban from Spin Boldak, an accusation Pakistan dismissed.

In response, Pakistan issued a statement saying 40 Afghan soldiers slipped across the border to Pakistan during the Taliban takeover of the crossing earlier this week.

The soldiers were returned to Afghanistan “with respect and dignity,” said the statement, which added that Pakistan also offered Afghanistan’s security force any logistical support it needed.

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Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report