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1980-1999
Ali Ibrahim Mursal
Sharon Herbaugh
Hansjoerg "Hansi" Krauss
Andrei Soloviev
Abdul Shariff
Farkhad Kerimov
Myles Tierney
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Ali
Ibrahim Mursal (1955-1993)
Ali Ibrahim Mursal, a driver and translator, died Jan.
5, 1993, after defending another AP staffer from a thief
in Somalia. He was 37. Mursal had driven three AP staffers
to Mogadishu's main market to buy fruit. As they walked
through the stalls, a thief tried to grab a gold chain
from the neck of one of the AP staffers. Mursal was
shot in the back with an assault weapon as he struggled
with the thief. He managed to direct his colleagues
to the nearest hospital, where he died. The AP hired
Mursal in August 1992 when the Somali native showed
up looking for work with two late-model Jeeps. AP Special
Correspondent Mort Rosenblum said he considered Mursal
to be a stringer who had excellent contacts and who
gathered useful, accurate information for the AP. "He
was a newsperson of the first order who risked his life
again and again for journalistic purposes," he
said.
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Sharon
Herbaugh (1954-1993)
Sharon Herbaugh was killed April 16, 1993, in a helicopter
crash in the central mountains of Afghanistan, 100 miles
north of Kabul. She was 39 and the first AP newswoman
and bureau chief to die on assignment. Herbaugh had spent
three years covering the Afghan civil war and its aftermath.
"One of Sharon's editors once said, She's always
looking for the next hurricane,'" AP President and
CEO Louis D. Boccardi said after her death. "That
search ended in a field in Afghanistan but Sharon leaves
a legacy of brave, insightful work that helped us all
understand a distant, bitter conflict." Herbaugh,
a native of Lamar, Colo., joined the AP in Denver in 1978,
and worked in Dallas, Houston and New York before transferring
to New Delhi in 1988, where she was named news editor
the following year. She became chief of bureau in Islamabad
in 1990.
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Hansjoerg
"Hansi" Krauss (1963-1993)
Photographer Hansi Krauss was one of four journalists
stoned to death in Mogadishu on July 12, 1993, by a mob
enraged by a U.S. helicopter assault on Somali militia
targets. He was 30. Krauss, a German native, joined the
AP in Berlin in 1989 and covered the fall of the Berlin
Wall that year. He later covered the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina
before going to Somalia. Colleagues remembered Krauss
a man who never lost his sense of humor and accumulated
friends. "He was a workhorse, loved his job and had
a passion for sensation," said Berlin photo editor
Elke Bruhn-Hoffman.
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Andrei
Soloviev (1955-1993)
Andrei Soloviev, a Russian free-lance photographer on
assignment for the AP, was fatally shot Sept. 27, 1993,
during a battle between Abkhazian and Georgian forces
for control of Sukhumi in the breakaway region of Abkhazia.
He was 39. The experienced combat photographer was wearing
a bullet-proof vest but he was shot in the shoulder and
the bullet penetrated his chest. Soloviev had been wounded
twice before while covering the ethnic conflicts in the
former Soviet Union, once in March 1993, and the second
time a week before his death. Soloviev, who worked for
the ITAR-Tass news agency, won a 1991 World Press Photo
"Golden Eye" award for coverage of ethnic conflicts
in the Caucasus Mountains, Moldova and Tajikistan. He
also covered the 1989 revolution in Romania and the 1991
Persian Gulf War. "I save people from death by my
presence with the camera," ITAR-Tass quoted Soloviev
as once saying. "I try to prevent violence with my
work."
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Abdul
Shariff (1962-1994)
Photographer Abdul Shariff was shot to death Jan. 9, 1994,
while covering a delegation of African National Congress
leaders visiting Katlehong, South Africa. He was 31. Shariff,
a free-lance photographer on assignment for the AP, was
in a crowd of journalists surrounding the dignitaries
on the muddy dirt road when young men carrying AK-47 automatic
rifles began shooting from the narrow paths between houses.
Shariff attempted to run across a small clearing - maybe
for a better view. Witnesses said he was killed by a single
shot in the back. The bullet apparently went through his
body and dented the Nikon F4 camera hanging around his
neck. Shariff was born in Verulam in the South African
state of Natal. He became a news photographer after studying
at the University of Natal-Pietermaritzburg.
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Farkhad
Kerimov (1948-1995)
Television cameraman Farkhad Kerimov, was killed May 22,
1995 while covering the war in Chechnya He was 46. Kerimov,
a free-lance cameraman, was on assignment for APTV when
he was shot while working near villages outside the Chechen
capital Grozny. He had been covering the breakaway republic's
war with Russia over its independence since December 1994.
He had covered the Caucasus region's ethnic and civil
conflicts since 1990, traveled repeatedly to the disputed
enclave of Nagorno Karabaskh and covered civil and ethnic
wars in Georgia, Tadjikistan and Moldova. Kerimov was
born in Moscow but spent most of his life in the Azerbaijan
capital of Baku, where he graduated from the Institute
of Physics and Mathematics and worked in the scientific
field before switching to journalism in 1988.
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Myles
Tierney (1964-1999)
Myles Tierney, a producer for APTN, was killed Jan. 10,
1999, when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle at a checkpoint
in Sierra Leone, torn by civil unrest between rebels and
the government. He was 34. Ian Stewart, AP’s West
Africa chief of bureau, suffered a gunshot wound to the
head in the attack and AP photographer David Guttenfelder
was injured by flying glass. Though he was a cameraman,
Tierney’s byline appeared on a range of stories
from Africa. He joined AP’s TV arm in 1996, organizing
coverage of a military coup in Burundi. He set up the
agency’s first TV bureau in New York before returning
to Africa in 1997. Nigel Baker, head of news for APTN,
said he was reluctant to send Tierney back but eventually
relented. “Not only was he the best man for the
job,” Baker said, “colleagues in Africa called
me to say Myles was the only man for the job. They trusted
him with their lives in difficult situations.”
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