An explosion outside a village in southern Afghanistan killed a U.S. Marine and a veteran war correspondent who became the first British journalist killed in the conflict, AP quoted officials as saying. With the death of Sunday Mirror journalist Rupert Hamer, 18 reporters have been killed in Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, according to figures kept by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. «Tragically it was a matter of time,» former British forces commander Col. Richard Kemp told Sky News television. «Our journalists, the same as other journalists, our British journalists deploying on operations with forces in Afghanistan or Iraq face exactly the same risks as our soldiers face out there.» Hamer, 39, and photographer Philip Coburn, 43, were accompanying a U.S. Marine patrol Saturday when their vehicle was hit by a makeshift bomb near the village of Nawa in Helmand, the Defense Ministry said. An U.S. Marine was also killed in the blast, the ministry said. Coburn was seriously wounded in the explosion but remains in stable condition, the military said.
