Helmand: The funeral has been held for an Afghan journalist working for the BBC who was found shot dead on Sunday.

Abdul Samad Rohani disappeared from Lashkar Gah in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday. Helmand police chief Mohammad Hussain Andiwal said police did not know who abducted and killed Rohani, 25, and were investigating the murder.

Dozens of journalists and media activists gathered in Kabul to condemn the murder. The reporter's body was taken from Lashkar Gah to his nearby home district of Marja where he was buried in the village cemetery.

Jon Williams, the BBC's world news editor, said, "Rohani's courage and dedication have been a key part of the BBC's reporting from Afghanistan in recent years."


A relative, who did not want to be identified, said neither the family nor Rohani had enemies. "The reason we lost our brother, we think, is to do with his job, being a journalist," he said.

Hwoever, Reporters Without Borders said it had been told by Rohani's colleagues that he had received phone threats from "a local chief who accused him of supporting the Kabul government and of 'boycotting' news put out by the Taliban."

The journalist had worked alongside the BBC's Kabul correspondent, Alastair Leithead, and was the Helmand reporter for the Pashto service of the BBC World Service.

He was the second foreign BBC journalist to be killed over the weekend.

Naftah Dahir Farah, 26, a freelancer who worked for the BBC and the Associated Press, was shot dead in Kismayo, southern Somalia, on Saturday.