November 20, 2001	Tuesday	Ramazan 4, 1422

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BRUSSELS, Nov 19: Four journalists, including two Reuters reporters, ambushed in Afghanistan on Monday have been confirmed as dead, Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero said.

Ruggiero told reporters at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels: “Through contacts with the crisis unit there, we have evidence that the four bodies found correspond to the four journalists.”

The four — Reuters reporter Harry Burton, an Australian television cameraman, and Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer, journalist Julio Fuentes of Spain’s El Mundo and reporter Maria Grazia Cutuli of Italy’s Corriere della Sera — were travelling from Pakistan to Kabul when they were ambushed.

Ruggiero said their bodies would be flown home via the Red Cross in Kabul.—Reuters

According to a report, some unidentified armed men took the journalists into their custody near Sarobi, some 70 kilometres west of Jalalabad, when they were going to Kabul. However, their translator of the Afghan origin and driver of the vehicle were released by the armed men, Our Staff Reporter adds.

Quoting the translator and the driver some credible sources told Dawn that the armed group first robbed the journalists and then shifted them to some unknown place.

The report suggested that the armed men first looted the team members and then shot them dead one by one.