Two French radio correspondents and a German reporter were killed in Afghanistan on Sunday night when Taliban forces ambushed a tank belonging to the United Front (Northern Alliance) in the north-east of the country.
Johanne Sutton (35), Pierre Billaud (31) and Volker Handolik (40) were the first journalists to die since the US began bombing Afghanistan on October 7th.
The journalists had waited with a mujahideen unit all day in the hope of travelling to the city of Taloqan, which the United Front claimed to have seized from the Taliban.
"They were riding on top of a tank with other journalists," explained RΘmi Sulmont of RTL radio station, who was replaced by Mr Billaud in Afghanistan in late October.
"They passed a line of trenches and they were happy because it looked completely empty. But the Taliban were hiding and they opened fire from behind with mortars and machine guns."
The tank sped up and the three journalists fell to the ground. At least three others were able to cling to the tank and survived unharmed.
Ms Sutton's body was retrieved Sunday night by the opposition fighters. The deaths of Mr Billaud and Mr Handolik were not confirmed until yesterday, when the United Front returned to the scene of the ambush. All three bodies were taken to a hospital in the Tajik capital Dushanbe for shipment to Europe.
Ms Sutton studied journalism in Lille and began working for Radio France Internationale during the 1991 Gulf War. She was the station's London correspondent for two years and recently covered Israel and the occupied territories.
"We called Jo 'Mother Sutton' to tease her for her slightly maternalistic, protective attitude," said Olivier Roger of RFI. "She was lively, intelligent, accurate . . . a fine writer and a great voice. She was made for radio."
AlbΘric de Gouville, the chief of correspondents at RFI, said he was moved to find the thoughtful, detailed list of instructions on visas, flights and contacts which Ms Sutton had prepared for the colleague who would replace her when she eventually left Afghanistan.
Mr Billaud studied journalism in Bordeaux and had been a foreign correspondent at RTL for two years, during which he worked in Israel and the occupied territories, Kosovo and Algeria. He was one of the first French journalists to reach Manhattan after the attack on the World Trade Centre.
The Paris office of the German weekly Stern said Mr Handolik was an experienced freelancer who had been on assignment for them in Afghanistan since early October.
