NPR Photographer, Interpreter Killed In Afghanistan 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal 
 
 Updated 3:15 a.m. ET 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Monika Evstatieva/NPR Monika Evstatieva/NPR 
 
 David Gilkey, an NPR photojournalist who chronicled pain and beauty in war and conflict, was killed in Afghanistan on Sunday along with NPR's Afghan interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna. 
 
 David and Zabihullah were on assignment for the network traveling with an Afghan army unit. They were in an armored Humvee driven by a soldier of the Afghan National Army. All three were killed after the Humvee was hit by rocket propelled grenades in an apparent ambush. 
 
 NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and producer Monika Evstatieva were also in the convoy, traveling in a separate vehicle. They were not injured. 
 
 Tom reports that when the journalists' remains arrived by helicopter at Camp Shorab in Helmand Province — where the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division has a training mission — an honor guard of "dozens and dozens" of U.S. soldiers stood at attention and saluted. 
 
 David was 50 and Zabihullah, who for years also worked as a photographer, was 38. 
 
 David was considered one of the best photojournalists in the world — honored with a raft of awards including a George Polk Award in 2010, a national News and Documentary Emmy in 2007 and dozens of distinctions from the White House News Photographers Association, including 2011 Still Photographer of the Year. 
 
 It is fair to say that David witnessed some of humanity's most challenging moments: He covered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He covered the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. He covered the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. He covered the devastating earthquake in Haiti, famine in Somalia and most recently the Ebola epidemic in Liberia. 
 
 His images were haunting — amid the rubble, he found beauty; amid war, he found humanity. 
 
 Back in 2010, after he covered the earthquake in Haiti, he talked about his craft. The camera, he said, made things easier. 
 
 "It's not like you put the camera to your face and therefore it makes what you're seeing OK, but certainly you can put yourself in a zone," David said. "It's hard, but you can't get caught up in it and become part of it. You still need to maintain your state of mind that you are helping tell this story." 
 
 Hide caption A little girl jumps across a flooded field containing the sewage runoff from the Mais Gate Camp after heavy rains in Port-au-Prince in 2010. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Alex Mertulus, age 10, the son of Magarette Brutus, stands in the mud in the Mais Gate Camp after heavy rains flooded the area in the middle of the night in Port-au-Prince. Both Magarette and her son Alex are fighting a loosing battle of moving around to different IDP camps trying to find a place were they can live. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption A little boy tries to get his kite in to the air at Camp Corail in Croiz de Bouquets outside of Port-au-Prince Haiti on May 4, 2010. Internally displaced people living in makeshift camps in the city were moved to the Corail camp in an attempt to give the people a safer and more permanent living situation. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption After the quake of 2010, a man stands on a rooftop yelling out for any sign of his missing relatives in a Port au Prince neighborhood. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption A man carrying a shotgun walks through a collapsed building while trying to keep looters at bay on the streets outside in the commercial district of downtown Port-au-Prince on January 18, 2010. Looters and scavengers ransacked destroyed buildings with little police presence. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Lance Cpl. Jake Romo does physical therapy at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Calif. He lost both legs in an explosion in Sangin, Afghanistan, in February 2011, while serving with the 3/5 Marines. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Amy Murray at home with her daughter Harper in Oceanside, Calif. Her husband, Capt. Patrick Murray, with the Darkhorse battalion, returned home from Afghanistan, in April 2011; 25 Marines from his unit did not. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Josue Barron lost his left leg and eye in Sangin, Afghanistan, while serving with the 3/5 Marines from Camp Pendleton, Calif. He now has a glass eye which is emblazoned with the 3/5 insignia. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Men watch the fires of a cremation along the banks of the Yamuna River against the backdrop of the Wazirabad Barrage and floating industrial waste in May 2016. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Earlier this year, a woman walks between two of the tents that house the hospital wards at the U.N. Protection of Civilians site near Bentiu, South Sudan, home to more than 120,000 people. Most of the camp's residents are women and children. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 1 of 10 i View slideshow 
 
 His craft, he said, was about more than journalism. 
 
 "It's not just reporting. It's not just taking pictures," he said. "It's, 'Do those visuals, do the stories, do they change somebody's mind enough to take action?'" 
 
 In an email to staff, Michael Oreskes, NPR's vice president for news, said David died pursuing that commitment. 
 
 "As a man and as a photojournalist, David brought out the humanity of all those around him," Michael said. "He let us see the world and each other through his eyes." 
 
 toggle caption Zabi Tamanna/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Keith Jenkins, the general manager for digital at the National Geographic Society who edited David at NPR, said he and David talked a lot about the dangers of the work David was doing and how much longer he could keep doing it. 
 
 "Ultimately, he felt it was really important to tell those stories and to tell them to a society that can very often forget that we have people in harm's way on a daily basis," Keith said. 
 
 David also understood those risks. 
 
 "It's a very hard thing to put into words, the peace you sort of make with what you're gonna be doing," David said. "I'm not saying you walk into these situations and you're fatalistic about it but you also are preparing and making decisions based on the sort of level of threat that is there." 
 
 Zabihullah, who was known as Zabi, worked as a photojournalist for the Chinese news agency Xinhua. More recently, he wrote for Turkey's Anadolu News Agency. Zabihullah kept a tick-tock on the country. He wrote the big news — when a new Afghani president was sworn in — but also covered the daily attacks and drone strikes that killed militants and civilians. 
 
 NPR's Philip Reeves recruited Zabihullah to NPR. He called him a "great colleague." 
 
 "He was a lovely man, with a great eye for a story and deep wisdom about his country," Philip said. "He clearly loved his family." 
 
 Zabihullah leaves behind three young children. 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry released the following statement: ||||| Hunter, 25, was a staff sergeant and journalist with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. He was killed by an improvised explosive device while covering his unit's foot patrols in Kandahar . He was the first Army journalist killed in action in Afghanistan since U.S. military operations began in October 2001, according to CPJ research. 
 
 Hunter would escort visiting journalists at times, but Kimberly Warren, editor of The Fort Campbell Courier, who worked with Hunter for about three years, said he frequently filed stories and photographs for her paper. The Courier serves troops stationed at Fort Campbell (on the border of the U.S. states of Kentucky and Tennessee ) and the base's surrounding civilian communities. The Associated Press quoted Hunter's colleagues as saying that Hunter also wrote, edited, and designed a monthly magazine. Hunter was on his first deployment to Afghanistan when he was killed. He had served twice in Iraq , Warren said. 
 
 In a column in The Courier, Warren wrote: "As Hunter's editor, I knew what he enjoyed to do and what he was good at doing. I was able to read every word that Hunter wrote and look at every fantastic photo that he took over the past three years we worked together. I can tell you he truly loved to do stories during his deployments. He loved to be out on the front lines with the soldiers." ||||| CLOSE Skip in Skip x Embed x Share "Michigan’s Band of Brothers" not only told the story of Michiganders at war, but won the Free Press its first national Emmy in 2006 for a documentary on the 900 Marines of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Marine Regiment. David P. Gilkey, Detroit Free Press 
 
 Detroit Free Press writer, Joe Swickard, left and Detroit Free Press photographer, David Gilkey, right, in Iraq. December 2006 (Photo: Family photo) 
 
 David P. Gilkey, a former Detroit Free Press photographer and video editor who built a career out of finding the human side of dire conflicts, was killed while on assignment for NPR in Afghanistan on Sunday. 
 
 Gilkey was traveling with an Afghan army unit near Marjah in southern Afghanistan when his vehicle was struck by shellfire, NPR spokeswoman Isabel Lara said in a statement. An Afghan translator, Zabihullah Tamanna, was also killed. Two other NPR journalists traveling with them were unharmed. 
 
 “I cannot think of a better person to face danger with than Gilkey,” said former Free Press staff writer Joe Swickard, who traveled to Fallujah, Iraq, with Gilkey in 2006. “He was at home on a battlefield under fire, in military situations. He kept his cool, and never lost his artist’s eye.” 
 
 Gilkey, 50, joined the Free Press in 1996. Over the next 11 years, his work took him to South Africa as well as to conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda, Darfur and Kosovo. When the Iraq war began, he was embedded with the first troops to invade and transmitted the first grainy, night-vision photographs of those troops crossing the border. 
 
 "David was one of the most intense journalists I've ever met," said Robert Huschka, Free Press executive editor. "He was committed to telling human stories -- even when it meant putting his own life in harm's way.” 
 
 "And, he was just a good guy," Huschka said. 
 
 In 2006, Gilkey was also the “driving force” behind a video series that won the newspaper its first Emmy: "Michigan Marines: Band of Brothers,” Swickard said. 
 
 As a key part of that series, Gilkey and Swickard followed a 900-member Marine Reserve Unit from Michigan, the largest single deployment of reserves from the state, and covered their daily lives in Fallujah: their cooking, living conditions, their patrols and combat and their funerals, as well as the experiences of their families back home. Gilkey stood out for his ability to bond with his subjects. 
 
 (Photo: Tina Fineberg, AP) 
 
 "David was in the select company of photojournalists who put it all on the line," said Paul Anger, formerly the editor and publisher of the Free Press. "He was savvy about the risks, and yet he was so cool and calm, determined to get the story and capture the moments as only he could. This is a deep loss for his family, his friends and colleagues, and for journalism." 
 
 That assignment was not without its own intense perils. While following the Marines on patrol, Swickard remembers riding one Humvee behind Gilkey when a rocket lifted Gilkey’s Humvee into the air as it burst into flames. 
 
 Yet Gilkey emerged, “cleared his head and started shooting video,” Swickard said. “His dedication to getting the story was extraordinary.” 
 
 Gilkey won the trust of the Marines with his commitment to reporting on “the war as it was,” said Christopher Kolomjec, a former Marines spokesman and major who was stationed in Fallujah at the time Gilkey was there with Swickard. Now an attorney in Novi, he said: “It was all about getting the best images. It took him completely over. There was nothing else -- that was him. He was obsessed.” 
 
 He also said of the Marines: “They considered him a brother of theirs by the end.” 
 
 In his work for NPR, Gilkey traveled to conflicts across the world, including numerous trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a statement from the news outlet. He was named Still Photographer of the Year in 2011 by the White House Photographers Association (WHPA) and also earned 36 distinctions, including nine first-place awards, from the WHPA since 2009, the statement said. 
 
 “He was one of the most thoughtful photographers I have ever known,” said Nancy Andrews, a former Free Press managing editor for digital media in Gilkey’s time at the newspaper. “On the exterior you had this war photographer who was willing to put himself at great risk to tell stories, and on the other hand you have this really gentle teddy bear.” She laughed: “I don’t think he’d want to be known as a teddy bear.” 
 
 And Kathy Kieliszewski, visuals director at the Free Press, said: "It didn’t matter if he was covering the war in Iraq or Mud Day at Hines Park, David put his all into capturing life in the most compelling and thoughtful way." 
 
 Buy Photo (Photo: 2006 photo by David P. Gilkey/Detroit Free Press) 
 
 Contact Daniel Bethencourt: 313-223-4531 or dbethencourt@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @_dbethencourt. 
 
 See some of David P. Gilkey's photography and video: 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1sZJItD ||||| Two members of an NPR news crew, David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna, were killed on Sunday while traveling in southern Afghanistan. 
 
 "They were traveling with an Afghan army unit when the convoy came under fire. Their vehicle was struck by shell fire," according to a statement by NPR. 
 
 Two other NPR crew members, correspondent Tom Bowman and producer Monika Evstatieva, "were in a following vehicle," NPR head of news Michael Oreskes told CNN. "Tom and Monika were not hurt." 
 
 Sunday's attack marks the first time in the 46-year history of NPR that one of its journalists has been killed on assignment. 
 
 Gilkey, 50, was an award-winning staff photographer and video editor for NPR. In the 15 years since the 9/11 attacks, he returned time and time again to Afghanistan and other conflict zones. 
 
 "David was profoundly committed to coverage of both Afghanistan and Iraq," Oreskes said. "He wanted to know what was happening to the people there. I think that's why he kept going back -- because he wanted to understand what was happening to the soldiers and civilians." 
 
 Tamanna was an Afghan freelance journalist hired by NPR to be a translator for its team of journalists. His Twitter profile also identified him as a freelancer with Anadolu News Agency. 
 
 In a telephone interview, Oreskes noted that "the Afghan journalists have been the bravest of all," documenting the ongoing conflict in the country while foreign correspondents rotate in and out. 
 
 The NPR team had been on assignment in the country for about three weeks. It was expected to be a month-long trip. The team had already filed multiple stories, including an in-depth report about an Afghan commando mission and a Memorial Day remembrance from Kandahar. Gilkey's photos were used on NPR's online platforms and digital stories and slide shows. 
 
 They were traveling near Marjah when the convoy was attacked on Sunday morning Afghan time. Baz Gul Mujahid, a local Afghan official, described the attack as an ambush, and said the journalists' vehicle had been struck by an 82mm rocket. 
 
 There was no immediate information available on any injuries or deaths among the Afghan army unit. 
 
 Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, attributed the killings to "Taliban brutality" and said "those who committed the heinous crime will be remembered as forces of hatred." The Taliban has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack. 
 
 Gallery: David Gilkey's photos from the frontlines 
 
 Gilkey and Tamanna's deaths were not announced until Sunday afternoon U.S. time because NPR officials notified family members first. 
 
 NPR staff members responded with shock when the news broke. 
 
 NPR CEO Jarl Mohn said in a statement, "Our hearts go out to his family, his friends and his colleagues out in the field." 
 
 "This is an unimaginable loss," "All Things Considered" host Audie Cornish wrote on Twitter. "David Gilkey was one of our greatest journalists." 
 
 CNN Senior International Correspondent Ivan Watson, who previously worked with Gilkey at NPR, said he was a "generous and patient mentor when it came to combat reporting." 
 
 "He was a master storyteller of all types and genres. Who else could come to a non-profit radio organization like NPR and carve out a niche for award-winning photography?" Watson said. 
 
 "Telling untold stories is what we do as radio journalists. David Gilkey showed them to you in his photographs that could move you to tears," "Morning Edition" producer Emily Ochsenschlager wrote. 
 
 She also highlighted Tamanna's contribution: "As someone who's traveled for NPR, I can attest to the importance of a translator. They are your rock, your ear." 
 
 Sultan Faizy, a freelance journalist and close friend of Tamanna, described him as "brave and committed to his profession." 
 
 "The only thing he was worried about was his family," Faizy said. 
 
 According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 31 journalists and media workers have been killed in Afghanistan since 9/11. Most of the cases were confirmed to be work-related. 
 
 The most recent case, in December 2014, involved a suicide bombing in Kabul. Zubair Hatami, a local cameraman, was among the dead. 
 
 "We've lost too many journalists to these wars. It's extremely dangerous work. Yet it's work that has to go on," Oreskes said. "And there's nobody who believed in that more than David." 
 
 In a statement on Sunday night, the Committee to Protect Journalists' Asia program coordinator Bob Dietz said, "Even though much of the world's attention has shifted away, let no one doubt that Afghanistan remains a dangerous place for journalists -- local and foreign -- working to cover that protracted conflict. We are deeply saddened by the deaths of Zabihullah Tamanna and David Gilkey. There are too many journalists who have given their lives to tell the Afghan story." 
 
 -- Masoud Popalzai contributed reporting.
– NPR is mourning veteran photojournalist David Gilkey, who has become the first American journalist outside the military to be killed in almost 15 years of US involvement in Afghanistan. Gilkey, 50, was killed alongside 38-year-old Afghan interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna when their vehicle was hit by shellfire as they traveled in an Afghan army convoy in Helmand province on Sunday afternoon, the New York Times reports. Two other members of the NPR team, who were embedded with Afghan special forces on a monthlong assignment, were unharmed in what authorities say was a Taliban ambush. This is the first time an NPR journalist has been killed on assignment, CNN reports. James P. Hunter, a 25-year-old staff sergeant and journalist with the Army's 101st Airborne Division, was killed in an IED attack in Afghanistan in 2010. Gilkey, who had won numerous awards and was considered one of the world's best photojournalists, "chronicled pain and beauty in war and conflict," writes Eyder Peralta at NPR. Gilkey had extensive experience in Afghanistan and had also reported from South Africa, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, Haiti, and Iraq, where he was embedded with the first US troops to invade. "David was one of the most intense journalists I've ever met," says Robert Huschka, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, which employed Gilkey from 1996 to 2007. "He was committed to telling human stories—even when it meant putting his own life in harm's way. And, he was just a good guy."