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A newspaper journalist became the first British reporter to die covering the war in Afghanistan when he was killed in an explosion while embedded with US Marines, officials said Sunday.
Rupert Hamer of the Sunday Mirror newspaper was blown up Saturday by a roadside bomb as he accompanied Marines patrolling near Nawa, southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence in London said.
Philip Coburn, 43, a photographer for the British tabloid working alongside Hamer, was injured in the explosion and was "in a serious but stable condition," officials said. A US Marine also died in the blast.
Hamer, a 39-year-old father of three young children and the paper's defence correspondent, was the first British journalist to die in the Afghanistan conflict, the Foreign Office said.
He was the second foreign journalist to be killed in the country in the space of 10 days.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "My heartfelt thoughts and sympathies are with the families, friends and colleagues of Rupert and Philip.
"Their courage, skill and dedication to reporting from the frontline was incredibly important and ensured that the world could see and read about our heroic troops."
The Sunday Mirror said the vehicle in which Hamer and Coburn were travelling was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED). They had flown to the region on December 31 for what was to have been a one-month reporting assignment with US forces.
On December 30, Canadian reporter Michelle Lang of the Calgary Herald newspaper was killed in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan alongside four soldiers when a roadside bomb exploded beneath their armoured vehicle.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack.
In all of last year, three journalists, including Lang, died in Afghanistan, according to a tally by the International News Safety Institute.
It was the fifth time Hamer, whose children are aged six, five and 19 months, had been to Afghanistan and he had also reported from Iraq, Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver said.
"He was a fine, fearless, and skilled writer who joined the paper 12 years ago," Weaver added.
"Affectionately known as Corporal Hamer in the office, he was a gregarious figure, a wonderful friend who was hugely popular with his colleagues."
She said one of Hamer's last acts had been to organise a special Christmas newspaper produced especially for British troops packed with messages from their families.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told Sky News television that Hamer was popular with troops because he was determined to experience the dangers they faced for himself.
"Soldiers and journalists don't always necessarily get on well together, they have very different jobs to do, but that wasn't the case for Rupert," Kemp said.
"He was very well respected by everybody he worked with, I never heard a bad word said about him."
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said there had been "great respect" for Hamer in his ministry.
"The sacrifice of service personnel is well documented and rightly respected, but this news demonstrates the risks also faced by journalists who keep the public informed of events on the front line," he said.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband also paid tribute to Hamer saying he had "died in the course of important work informing the world about the situation in Afghanistan."
The Ministry of Defence initially said an Afghan soldier had been killed in the blast which killed Hamer, but later corrected the statement to say no Afghans died or were wounded.
A total of 1,576 troops in the military coalition have died in Afghanistan since 2001, according to the icasualties.org website, including 246 British soldiers.
