A correspondent for the German news magazine Stern, Jochen Piest, has become the third journalist killed while covering the war in Chechnya.
Piest was shot Tuesday night in the village of Chervlyonna, about 15 miles northeast of the Chechen capital of Grozny, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Ivan Skrylnik said Wednesday.Another journalist, Vladimir Sorokin from the daily newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta, was wounded, along with several Russian soldiers in what the ministry called a "kamikaze" attack by a Chechen rebel.
A spokesman at Stern's headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, said the Chechen drove a small diesel locomotive at high speed toward an empty Russian troop train parked on the track.
"He fired his submachine gun, and the reporters threw themselves onto the ground. Piest was fatally hit by three bullets, Sorokin was hit in the leg," the spokesman said.
He said the gunman died when the locomotive collided with the military train.
Piest had worked as a Moscow correspondent for Stern since last March.