TV cameraman is eighth slain journalist of war

TALOQAN, Afghanistan -- Robbers killed a Swedish TV cameraman Tuesday in northern Afghanistan, the eighth death of a journalist since the start of the U.S.-led military campaign.

Ulf Stroemberg, a 42-year-old cameraman for Sweden's TV4, was among journalists staying at a house in Taloqan, the base for scores of foreign reporters covering the siege of Kunduz.

Two young masked men armed with Kalashnikov rifles broke into the house early Tuesday, taking cameras, computers, a satellite telephone and money from journalists for the newspaper Aftonbladet, the paper reported.

They moved to the next room, waking Stroemberg with a knock on the door, said Rolf Porseryd, a reporter who shared his room.

"As soon as he opened the door, there was a bang. Ulf fell over me. "I'm hit, I'm shot,' " Porseryd quoted Stroemberg as saying.

Porseryd said he and other journalists tried to revive Stroemberg and rushed him to a hospital, where a doctor pronounced him dead.

In Stockholm, TV4's program director Jan Scherman said the network was pulling its journalists out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. Separately, a Canadian freelance reporter was detained Tuesday in Taliban-held territory of southern Afghanistan, according to the editor of the weekly newspaper for which he writes.

Alastair Sutherland, the Montreal Mirror editor, said reporter Ken Hechtman was taken prisoner near Kandahar. Initial reports indicated the journalist, 33, was held by the Taliban, but Sutherland said later the identity of his captors was unclear.

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