Italian prosecutors announced Tuesday they had opened a murder inquiry into the killing of a journalist from the daily Corriere della Sera in Afghanistan the day before.
Prosecutors Federico De Siervo and Italo Ormanni, who are heading the inquiry, have been in contact with the Italian foreign ministry to try to establish the exact circumstances in which 39-year-old Maria Grazia Cutuli was killed.
Cutuli was shot dead with three colleagues and their Afghan interpreter when the convoy in which they were travelling was ambushed by gunmen on the road between the eastern city of Jalalabad and the capital Kabul.
Italian newspapers paid tribute to their fallen colleague on Tuesday, describing her as "proud, courageous, tenacious and passionate about her profession."
The Sicilian-born journalist had covered conflicts in Bosnia, Congo and Sierra Leone as well as being a frequent visitor to Afghanistan, where she traveled even during her holidays.
She had previously worked for the UN refugee agency in Rwanda and Cambodia.
Her colleagues helped her celebrate her 39th birthday with a party in Peshawar, Pakistan, on October 26, a photograph of which was published in La Repubblica on Tuesday.
She had been dispatched to Pakistan and Afghanistan by her newspaper in the days following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Cutuli's body is believed to have been among those of four people recovered from the roadside by authorities early Tuesday.
Jose Fuentes, of Spain's El Mundo, an Australian TV cameraman working for Reuters, Harry Burton, as well as Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari, were also killed in the ambush – Rome (AFP)
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