By Jason Straziuso
Associated Press
Sunday, October 8, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 7 -- Two German journalists who had pitched a tent on the side of a road outside a northern Afghan village were killed by gunmen early Saturday.

The freelance journalists were the first foreign reporters killed in Afghanistan since late 2001, when eight journalists died.

A NATO soldier, meanwhile, was killed by insurgents who detonated a roadside bomb and fired on a military patrol in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. The soldier was Canadian, Canada's defense department said.

The killings came on the fifth anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2001, invasion by U.S.-led troops to oust the Taliban for hosting Osama bin Laden. U.S. and allied forces and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance quickly routed the ruling Islamic militia.

But Taliban fighters have returned with a vengeance, taking control of large swaths of the country in the last year. They have stepped up the use of roadside and suicide bombs.

The slain journalists -- identified as Karen Fischer, 30, and Christian Struwe, 38 -- were working for Deutsche Welle, Germany's state-owned broadcast outlet.

The two were traveling through the northern province of Baghlan, about 100 miles northwest of Kabul, and had stopped outside a village, where they set up a tent to spend the night, said Mohammad Azim Hashami, the provincial police chief. They were killed by AK-47 assault rifle gunfire around 1:30 a.m., he said.

"The sound of the shooting was heard by some of the villagers, who ran toward that area," Hashami said. "They found a tent, and they found the two journalists dead."

Hashami said nothing was stolen from the journalists, including their vehicle. Police had no suspects.

Deutsche Welle said the journalists had been conducting research for a documentary and were en route to the province of Bamian, where two large Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taliban in early 2001.

Deutsche Welle director Erik Bettermann called them "pioneers in reestablishing a functioning media system in Afghanistan" and said Struwe helped set up a state-run radio and television newsroom, a project supported by Deutsche Welle.

About 2,700 German soldiers are serving in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in the north of the country.

No foreign journalists have been killed in Afghanistan since late 2001, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. An Afghan journalist who arrived at the scene of a suicide bombing in July in the southern city of Kandahar was killed by a second suicide bombing at the same spot, the group said.