Hamer, a veteran war correspondent, was killed and Sunday Mirror photographer Philip Coburn
was injured while embedded with a U.S. Marine unit. The journalists were
traveling in an armored vehicle when it was hit by a roadside bomb. A U.S.
Marine was also killed.
The U.K.-based Sunday
Mirror said the two journalists had left
on New Year’s Eve to cover the
troop increase in
Hamer, 39, had been employed by the paper for a dozen years and was making his
fifth trip to
the Mirror said. He had also covered
the war in
He was survived by a wife and three children.
The Marines were on patrol near Nawa, in the southern
where
Canadian troops and Taliban fighters had squared off ahead of an expected
offensive.