This video was produced for the White House News Photographers Association, when it named David its 2011 Still Photographer of the Year.
Ten years ago today, NPR journalists David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna were killed while on assignment with an NPR team in Afghanistan. They were traveling with the Afghan National Army when their convoy was ambushed — not random victims, but targeted by attackers who had been tipped off to the presence of Americans in Afghanistan's Helmand province. They are the only NPR journalists who have ever been killed in the line of duty.
David joined NPR in 2007. He covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and an Ebola epidemic in Liberia. He spent time with refugees of Syria's civil war in Toledo, Ohio, and captured the stories of schoolchildren in Kabul. He felt especially close to U.S. servicemen and women who he covered on battlefields overseas and followed their stories when they returned home. He took every opportunity to highlight the sacrifices they made in the face of grave danger.
David was 50, and Zabihullah, who had worked for years as a photographer before serving as NPR's interpreter in Afghanistan, was 38.
What follows is a series of remembrances published in the years since David and Zabihullah's deaths, as well as a selection of some of David's remarkable work during his time at NPR.
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