Australian cameraman wounded in Afghanistan
Patrick Walters, National security editor | June 20, 2008
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FORMER SBS cameraman Jamie Kidston has been shot and wounded in Afghanistan's Kandahar province as Afghan and NATO forces continue to battle Taliban insurgents across the country's southern provinces.
Kidston, 36, who now works as a civilian cameraman for NATO, received a single gunshot wound in the forearm while filming with a Canadian military training team in the Arghandab district, just outside Kandahar city.
An International Security Assistance Force spokesman, Major David Harris, said Kidston's injuries were not life-threatening and he was operated on at the main ISAF hospital at Kandahar airfield yesterday.
"His condition is stable. He may require repatriation to Australia for further treatment," Major Harris told The Australian last night.
The incident was the second occasion this year in which Australian journalists have been wounded in Afghanistan.
In April, Stephen Dupont, 41, a freelance photographer, and journalist Paul Raffaele were lucky to survive a suicide bomber attack in a village in the eastern province of Nangarhar. The blast killed 15 people.
Raffaele received shrapnel wounds to the arm, shoulder and head and Dupont escaped with minor cuts.
Five Australian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, including four since October.
In recent days, there has been renewed fighting around Kandahar following a mass jail breakout last week in the city that allowed several hundred Taliban prisoners to escape from Sarposa prison.
Afghan and Canadian-led NATO forces have battled insurgents holed up in fruit groves surrounding villages in the Arghandab district 15km north of Kandahar. The onset of summer has seen a surge in contact with insurgents in recent weeks across southern Afghanistan.
In Helmand province, nine British soldiers have died in the past 10 days, bringing the total number of British military dead to 106 since late 2001.
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