Outrage mounted across the world on Tuesday a day after ten journalists were killed in ISIS-claimed attacks in Afghanistan.
A double suicide blast in Kabul left 25 people dead including AFP photographer Shah Marai and eight other journalists, while a BBC reporter was killed in a separate attack in eastern Khost province.
The second Kabul bomber disguised himself as a journalist and detonated himself among the crowd, police said, in what Reporters Without Borders said was the most lethal single attack on the media since the fall of the Taliban.
Journalists from Radio Free Europe and Afghan broadcasters Tolo News and 1TV were among the others killed.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "outraged" by the suicide blasts, which left another 49 people wounded.
"The deliberate targeting of journalists in the attack highlights once again the risks media professionals face in carrying out their essential work," he said.
In a third strike on a bloody day for Afghanistan, 11 children were killed and 16 people wounded, including Romanian and Afghan soldiers, when another suicide attacker exploded his car near a NATO convoy in southern Kandahar province.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that the weakened militants were targeting journalists in Afghanistan in order to undermine the electoral process ahead of an expected vote in October.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also condemned the "senseless and barbaric attack".
"The vibrant media landscape that has developed in Afghanistan will endure, in large part due to those journalists and media professionals who tragically died in today's attack, but whose courageous and steadfast work helped lay the foundation for Afghanistan's thriving and resilient independent media," he said.
The BBC confirmed that its reporter, 29-year-old Ahmad Shah who had worked for the broadcaster for more than a year, was shot by unidentified armed men in Khost and that police were investigating the motive.
The attacks came days after the Taliban began a spring offensive, in an apparent rejection of a peace talks overture by the Afghan government.
Afghanistan was last year ranked the third most dangerous country in the world for journalists by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and on Monday the watchdog urged the international community to guard the media from future attacks.
"It is high time that the UN send a strong signal to the international community and to local protagonists by appointing a Special Representative for the protection of journalists," the group's chief Christophe Deloire said.
Human Rights Watch also warned that a deliberate attack on civilians was a "war crime", adding in a statement Tuesday: "Journalists have long paid a high price for covering Afghanistan's armed conflict."
RSF said that since 2016, it has recorded the killings of 34 journalists in Afghanistan.
AFP's Marai joined the agency as a driver in 1996, the year the Taliban seized power. He soon began taking pictures on the side, covering stories including the US invasion in 2001. In 2002, he became a full-time photo stringer, rising through the ranks to become the bureau's chief photographer.
During his career he was beaten and threatened by the Taliban, and suffered devastating personal loss including in 2014 when AFP senior reporter and his good friend Sardar Ahmad was killed along with his wife and two of his children in a Taliban attack.
Marai, 41, left behind six children, including a newborn daughter.
He was buried near his home village in the Shomali Plain, north of Kabul, later Monday in a ceremony attended by heartbroken relatives, friends and colleagues.
Amid the deteriorating security, the US government’s top watchdog on Afghanistan revealed that the number of Afghan security forces decreased by nearly 11 percent in the past year.
In a report released on Tuesday, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, said the number of forces in the Afghan National Defense and Security forces (ANDSF), which includes the army, air force and police, totaled an estimated 296,400 personnel as of January.
That was a drop of 10.6 percent compared to the same month in 2017. The authorized strength of the ANDSF is 334,000 personnel.
The United States has for nearly two decades been seeking to build Afghan security forces capable of defending and holding territory.
“Building up the Afghan forces is a top priority for the US and our international allies, so it is worrisome to see Afghan force strength decreasing,” John Sopko, the head of SIGAR, told Reuters.
Publicly, US officials have presented an optimistic view of the situation in Afghanistan. The top US general in Afghanistan said late last year that the country had “turned the corner.”
Privately, however, US officials have been more circumspect.
US intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that despite extensive US training and support, the vast majority of Afghan forces are incapable of preventing the Taliban from retaking much of the territory the militant group lost after the United States invaded the country in 2001.
