IWPR-Trained Journalist Killed in Helmand
Reporter had defied death threats to continue covering Taliban operations.
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IWPR-Trained Journalist Killed in Helmand
Reporter had defied death threats to continue covering Taliban operations.
IWPR-trained journalist Mohammed Ilyas Dayee was killed by a car bomb in Helmand’s provincial capital Lashkar Gah on November 11.
The 32-year-old was working for a number of well-known outlets, including Azadi Radio, and had reportedly received numerous death threats for his coverage of Taleban operations.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which also injured several other civilians.
Like many other local journalists, Dayee had been warned not to report on the insurgents’ activities in the southern Afghanistan province. Militants had recently searched his home and threatened him once again.
During Dayee’s time with IWPR he also covered numerous stories about the Taleban, including the backlash that followed their lynching of an eight-year-old boy in 2010.
In a personal piece he wrote for IWPR in 2010 he highlighted his 2007 story on efforts to encourage farmers to switch from growing opium poppy to pomegranates. The local government subsequently invested in 1,000 acres of orchards for local growers.
“This was my best report and I remain proud of it,” he wrote, adding, “Reports like this come from the bottom of my heart.”
PROFILE PAGE Mohammad Ilyas Dayee I was born on January 4, 1988, in the Nad Ali district of Helmand province in Afghanistan. |
RIGHTS CORRIDOR Bomb blast kills broadcast journalist in Afghanistan |
Elyas Dayee, a radio journalist with RFE/RL, killed in a blast in Helmand days after a former TOLOnews journalist was killed in Kabul. |
