Sharon Herbaugh

Sharon Herbaugh, the first AP newswoman and bureau chief to die on assignment, was killed April 16, 1993, in a helicopter crash in the central Afghanistan mountains, 100 miles north of Kabul. She was 39.

Herbaugh, who had spent three years covering the Afghan civil war and its aftermath, was working on a story about the United Nations' efforts to aid in rebuilding the country.

"One of Sharon's editors once said, 'She's always looking for the next hurricane,'" said President and CEO Louis D. Boccardi. "That search ended in a field in Afghanistan but Sharon leaves a legacy of brave, insightful work that helped us all understand a distant, bitter conflict."

Herbaugh, a native of Lamar, Colo., joined the AP in Denver in 1978 after graduating from Baylor University. She moved to Dallas in 1979, transferred to Houston in 1980 and to the International Desk in New York in 1986. She transferred in 1988 to New Delhi and was named news editor the following year. She became chief of bureau in Islamabad in 1990.

Ali Ibrahim Mursal

Ali Ibrahim Mursal, a driver and translator, was killed Jan. 5, 1993, defending another AP staffer from a thief in Somalia. He was 37.

Mursal had driven three AP staffers covering the famine in Somalia to Mogadishu's main market to buy fruit. As they walked through the stalls, a thief tried to grab a gold chain from the neck of one of the AP staffers. Mursal was shot in the back with an assault weapon as he struggled with the thief. Despite his injuries, he managed to tell his colleagues how to get to the nearest hospital, where he died.

AP Special Correspondent Mort Rosenblum hired Mursal in August 1992 when the Somali native showed up looking for work with two late-model Jeeps. Within a few days, Rosenblum considered him a stringer who had excellent contacts and who gathered useful, accurate information for the AP.

"He was a newsperson of the first order who risked his life again and again for journalistic purposes," Rosenblum said. "He saved my life at least three times that I know of."

Hansi Krauss

Photographer Hansjoerg ("Hansi") Krauss was killed July 12, 1993, in Mogadishu, one of four journalists stoned to death by an angry mob after a U.S. helicopter assault on Somali militia targets. He was 30.

Krauss joined the AP in Berlin in 1989 and covered the fall of the Berlin Wall that year. He later covered the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina before going to Somalia.

"Hansi was a classic street photographer," said Mark Fritz, then AP West Africa correspondent, who worked with the German native in Berlin. "I remember when leftists beat him senseless after he took pictures of an anarchist squatter's commune. He complained more about his broken camera than his busted nose and swollen face."

Colleagues recalled how Krauss maintained both his sense of humor and humanity in the face of war's atrocities. "I remember he got shot at the cemetery one morning, and it was obvious people were aiming at photographers," said AP newsman Tony Smith, who worked with Krauss in Sarajevo. "He came back to the office shaken up, but he still managed to laugh."

Andre Soloviev

Andre Soloviev, a Russian free-lance photographer, was fatally shot Sept. 27, 1993, during a battle between Abkhazian and Georgian forces for control of Sukhumi in the breakaway region of Abkhazia. He was 39.

Although Soloviev was wearing a bullet-proof vest, he was shot in the shoulder and the bullet penetrated his chest. Soloviev had been wounded twice before while covering the ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union, once in March 1993, and the second time a week before his death.

Soloviev, who worked for the ITAR-Tass news agency, won a 1991 World Press Photo "Golden Eye" award for coverage of ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus Mountains, Moldova and Tajikistan. He also covered the 1989 revolution in Romania and the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Soloviev worked as a graphic designer and artist for a state bank in Moscow, until 1987, when an exhibit of 1940s-era pictures by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson inspired him to pursue photography.

An editor of TASS news agency soon after saw an exhibition of Soloviev's photographs for the bank and offered him a job.

Abdul Shariff

Abdul Shariff, a South African free-lance photographer for the AP, was shot to death Jan. 9, 1994, while covering a congregation of African National Congress leaders visiting Katlehong, South Africa. He was 31.

Shariff was in a crowd of journalists surrounding the dignitaries on the muddy dirt road when snipers carrying assault rifles began shooting from the narrow paths between houses.

As others dropped to the ground, Shariff attempted to run across a small clearing. He was killed by a single shot in the back that pierced his body and dented the Nikon camera hanging around his neck.

Shariff was born in Verulam in the South African state of Natal. He studied at the University of Natal-Pietermaritzburg and worked as a news photographer for several newspapers and news agencies.

Farkhad Kerimov

Farkhad Kerimov, a Russian free-lance television cameraman covering the war in Chechnya for APTV, was killed May 22, 1995. He was 46.

Kerimov was shot while working near the villages of Shuani and Vedeno, 27 miles from the capital Grozny. He had been covering the breakaway republic's war with Russia over its independence since December 1994.

Kerimov had covered the Caucasus region's ethnic and civil conflicts since 1990, before the breakup of the Soviet Union. He traveled repeatedly to the disputed enclave of Nagorno Karabaskh and covered civil and ethnic wars in Georgia, Tadjikistan and Moldova. Kerimov, who understood the region and its conflicts, often worked alone and produced interviews with key political figures in addition to covering action.

Kerimov was born in Moscow but spent most of his life in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. He graduated from Baku's Institute of Physics and Mathematics and worked in the scientific field before switching to journalism in 1988.

Myles Tierney

Myles Tierney, a producer for APTN, was killed Jan. 10, 1999, when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle at a checkpoint in Sierra Leone, an African nation torn by civil unrest between rebels and the government. He was 34.

Ian Stewart, AP's West Africa chief of bureau, suffered a gunshot wound to the head in the attack and AP photographer David Guttenfelder was injured by flying glass.

Though he was a cameraman, Tierney's byline appeared on a range of stories from Africa.

He joined AP's TV arm in 1996, organizing coverage of a military coup in Burundi. He set up the agency's first TV bureau in New York before returning to Africa in 1997.

Nigel Baker, head of news for APTN, said he was reluctant to send Tierney back but eventually relented. "Not only was he the best man for the job," Baker said, "colleagues in Africa called me to say Myles was the only man for the job. They trusted him with their lives in difficult situations."

Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora

APTN producer and cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora was killed May 24, 2000, when rebels ambushed his vehicle near Rogberi Junction in Sierra Leone. He was 32.

A native of Barcelona, Spain, Gil Moreno de Mora abandoned a career as a corporate lawyer to work as a journalist. His family said Gil Moreno de Mora felt called to his mission of giving a voice to people who had none.

Gil Moreno de Mora covered conflicts for APTN in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Congo, and Sierra Leone. He won the 1998 Rory Peck photographic prize and the 1999 Television Technician of the Year award from the Royal Television Society.

His death brought an outpouring of grief and tribute from inside and outside the AP.

“Miguel was intuitive, bold and one of the most intelligent cameramen of his generation,” said Nigel Baker, head of news for APTN. “He had immense respect from all who knew him not just for his work but because he was a deeply modest man who would help anybody he could.”

Lawton was the husband of APTN Producer Elida Ramadani. Born in Brussels, Belgium and raised in England, Lawton was the son of a Turkish mother and a British father. Bilingual in Turkish and English, he also spoke German, French and some Italian.

Lawton joined the AP as a newsman in Rome and later joined APTN in Turkey. He immersed himself in assignments that sent him into the grimmest of circumstances — the conflict in Kosovo, the Kurdish insurgency in southeast Turkey, Albania’s 1997 plunge into near-anarchy, ethnic tensions in China’s Xinjiang province.

Yet through it all, there was a sense of generosity about him, an infectious sense of fun.

“I do not exaggerate in saying that he was everyone’s golden boy,” said Rome Chief of Bureau Dennis Redmont, a family friend. “He had a lightness in a profession where many people are heavy hitters. Everyone wanted Kerem as his brother, his boyfriend and his son.”

APTN cameraman Nazeh Darwazeh was killed April 19, 2003 while filming a confrontation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians throwing stones and firebombs in the West Bank city of Nablus. He was 43 and was hailed by colleagues as a courageous cameraman who worked fearlessly to ensure that events in Nablus were reported internationally. Darwazeh began working for APTN in 2001 after the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Born into a large family, Darwazeh studied at the University in Amman in Jordan. He returned to Nablus in 1990 to work in one of his family’s three photo studios, and later as a cameraman for Palestinian TV. Darwazeh was married to Naela and the couple had four sons and a daughter, ranging in age from four months to 11 years old.