World / Taliban conduct house-to-house search to find journalist, kill his family member

Kabul: German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle says the Taliban shot and killed a relative of one of their reporters in Afghanistan and severely injured a second family member.

DW said in a statement on Thursday that the Taliban fighters were allegedly conducting a door-to-door search to try and find the journalist, who now works in Germany. It said that other family members managed to escape and are now on the run.

Deutsche Wells did not reveal the identity of the journalist and did not give further details on the killed and injured family members or say where and when exactly in Afghanistan the killing took place.

DW director general Peter Limbourg sharply condemned the killing and said, “The killing of a close relative of one of our editors by the Taliban yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in Afghanistan find themselves.”

Peter Limbourg further said, “It is evident that the Taliban are already carrying out organized searches for journalists, both in Kabul and in the provinces. We are running out of time!"

The German Journalists' Association (DJV) has called on the German government to take swift action, claiming that the reporters and stringers who worked for Western media are now being hunted down in Afghanistan.

DJV chairman Frank Überall said, "Germany must not stand idly by while our colleagues are persecuted and even murdered."

JOURNALISTS UNDER ATTACK IN AFGHANISTAN

Deutsche Welle has alleged that the Taliban have raided the home of at least three of its journalists.

This comes after the Islamist militant movement in a press conference on Tuesday said that it would allow free media and jobs for women - banned when it was last in power from 1996 to 2001.

Sahar Nasari, a presenter on state-owned Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday, "It has become clear there is a gap between action and words."

Nasari alleged that Taliban members took his camera and beat up his colleague while he was trying to film a story in Kabul on Thursday.

Meanwhile, an editor at Pajhwok News Agency in Kabul said on condition of anonymity that a Taliban official had advised his 18 female reporters to work from home until the movement had finalised its rules on women at work.

Presenter Shabnam Dawran, RTA, said she was turned away from her job after being told "the regime has changed".

In another instance of an attack on journalists, Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said the Taliban beat him and a TV cameraman from another agency in the midst of the tumult, AP reported.