March 21, 2014
KABUL: Ahmad Sardar, a staff reporter at the Agence France-Presse news agency, was killed in an attack on Kabul’s Serena hotel, it was confirmed Friday.
According to AFP, Ahmad, 40, was shot dead along with his wife and two of his three children when Taliban gunmen attacked the hotel on Thursday evening.
An AFP staff photographer identified the four bodies at a city hospital and said the family’s youngest son was undergoing emergency treatment after being badly wounded in the attack.
Ahmad, who also ran the Kabul Pressistan media company, joined AFP in 2003 and became the agency’s senior reporter in Kabul.
He covered all aspects of life, war and politics in his native Afghanistan for AFP.
On January 15, 2008, a Taliban Attack on same hotel left 8 dead including Thomassen, a 38-year-old Norwegian who worked for the Oslo daily Dagbladet.
He is the fourth journalist killed in Afghanistan as of 2014. These bring the tolls to 43 in Afghanistan since 1993.