Danish Siddiqui: Pulitzer Prize-winning Reuters photographer killed in Afghanistan

Danish Siddiqui: Pulitzer Prize-winning Reuters photographer killed in Afghanistan

Siddiqui was the information company’s chief photographer in India, based mostly in Mumbai. Reuters reported Siddiqui’s demise on Friday, citing an Afghan commander who stated he had been killed whereas protecting preventing between Afghan safety forces and Taliban fighters.

The commander stated that Afghan particular forces had been preventing to retake a market space close to a border crossing with Pakistan when Siddiqui and a senior Afghan officer had been killed, in accordance with Reuters.

Reuters reported that Siddiqui had been embedded for the previous week with Afghan particular forces and that he knowledgeable the information company that he had been wounded within the arm throughout an earlier conflict on Friday. The information company stated it was “unable to independently confirm the main points of the renewed preventing described by the Afghan army official.”

“We’re urgently searching for extra data, working with authorities within the area,” Reuters president Michael Friedenberg and editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni stated in a press release posted on Twitter.

“Danish was an excellent journalist … a loyal husband and father, and a much-loved colleague. Our ideas are along with his household at this horrible time,” they added.

Siddiqui’s physique has been handed over by the Taliban to the Worldwide Committee of the Pink Cross, in accordance with sources at India’s Ministry of Exterior Affairs. The ministry is coordinating the return of his stays with Afghan authorities and the Pink Cross.

Siddiqui had been a photographer for Reuters since 2010, documenting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, protests in Kong Kong and taking over assignments in India that ranged from spiritual celebrations to the nation’s battle in opposition to coronavirus.

He was a part of a Reuters staff that gained the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Function Pictures for work protecting the Rohingya refugees who had been fleeing Myanmar. The judges described the work as “surprising pictures that uncovered the world to the violence” confronted by the minority group.

In response to a profile on Reuters’ web site, Siddiqui acquired his first formal coaching in images at movie faculty.

“Whereas I take pleasure in protecting information tales — from enterprise to politics to sports activities — what I take pleasure in most is capturing the human face of a breaking story,” Siddiqui stated within the profile. “I shoot for the frequent man who desires to see and really feel a narrative from a spot the place he cannot be current himself.”

Danish Siddiqui won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the Rohingya refugee crisis. This photo shows a Rohingya woman touching the shore after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.
The Press Club of India said in a statement that it was “shocked” on the passing of Siddiqui.

“True journalism wants braveness and Danish’s physique of labor is a testomony to that,” it stated. “We’re at a lack of phrases.”

Associates and colleagues paid tribute to Siddiqui on Twitter.

“Danish was a beautiful man. When he returned from assignments to the bureau, reporters greeted him like a rock star, which he actually was. He was simply totally different. Information wasn’t simply information for him. He noticed the individuals behind it, and needed to make you are feeling,” stated the journalist Rahul Bhatia.
Henry Foy of the Monetary Occasions described Siddiqui as a “brilliantly gifted photographer and an exquisite former colleague.”

“His humour and appeal by no means didn’t mild up the room, and his work introduced critically necessary tales to our eyes. A complete professional, certainly one of a form: An enormous loss to journalism,” stated Foy.

— Vedika Sud contributed reporting.