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Call for Withdrawal of Journalists from War Zones
Monday, November 12, 2001
By Jessica Hodgson / The Guardian

The International Federation of Journalists today issued a call to media organisations to pull journalists back from war zones in the wake of the killing of three journalists in Afghanistan.

It said it was "reckless" to follow in the wake of a fighting force that could not provide basic security.

The call follows the killing yesterday of two French journalists and one German journalist in an ambush in north-eastern Afghanistan.

The Radio France Internationale correspondent, Johanne Sutton, Pierre Billaud, who worked for Luxembourg-based RTL, and Volder Handloik, a freelance journalist with German magazine Stern, were killed while travelling on an armoured personnel carrier with Northern Alliance forces.

They were accompanying an alliance commander on an inspection of Taliban trenches they believed to have surrendered and were killed after the Taliban ambushed them and opened fire with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
(More: MediaGuardian.co.UK News Source)
2001 © Guardian Newspapers Limited.

Dan