Senior Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai passed away on Thursday in Peshawar after a prolonged illness. His son Arshad Yusufzai, in a tweet, said his father breathed his last after fighting a long battle against cancer.
Yusufzai, 67, was considered an expert on Afghanistan and the Taliban. He covered the situation in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979 and interviewed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as well as Taliban founder Mullah Omar.
Many South Asian journalists paid their respect to Yusufzai.
He was the resident editor of The News International at the Peshawar Bureau and also a correspondent of BBC’s Pashto and Urdu services in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said he was saddened to hear of the death of “one of Pakistan’s most well-respected journalists”.
“His void is irreparable,” Taliban spokesperson Sohail Shaheen tweeted.
