Japanese reporter Mika Yamamoto was killed on Monday in the Syrian city of Aleppo, where clashes between rebels and regime forces have raged for weeks. Yamamoto, a veteran war correspondent who covered the 2001 conflict in Afghanistan and the 2003 conflict in Iraq, was working for The Japan Press, an independent TV news provider that specialises in conflict zone coverage. Yamamoto’s colleague Kazutaka Sato, who was with her at the time of her death, told Japanese media that they were with anti-regime forces when they were shot at by what appeared to be government soldiers.
In a separate development, three other journalists were reported missing on Tuesday in Syria, two of them from the U.S.-funded TV station Al-Hurra, which broadcasts in the Arabic language.
According to the IPI Death Watch, 33 journalists have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the year. Yamamoto is the fifth foreign journalist to lose her life in the Syrian conflict.