Times Afghanistan correspondent wins Frontline Club excellence award

The Frontline Club has named the Times' Afghanistan correspondent Jerome Starkey winner of its annual excellence in journalism award.

Starkey, who is based in Afghanistan, has reported extensively on civilian casualties during the Afghanistan War. His coverage of a raid in February this year in which five civilians were killed prompted a US military commander to visit the victims' families.

"When I have been in Kabul I get more call-backs on Jerome Starkey's work than anyone else's. He has found ways of getting at what is going on on the ground, in places where he himself can't physically travel. I think he is brave, physically and editorially, has an independent mind, seems genuinely on top of things and leading the thinking among the resident hacks. And I think he cares about what's true, as opposed to what people say is true," says Frontline Awards judge and BBC special correspondent Allan Little in a press release.

The club is also honouring New York Times photojournalist Joao Silva, who was recently injured by a landmine while embedded with the US military in Afghanistan. Friends of Silva have set up a website to help raise money for his recovery.

"No one that I know personifies the original founding spirit of Frontline more than Joao. Joao has been consistently on the true frontlines of the world's conflicts for years, now, and he's always done so like a dyed in the wool professional: quietly valiant, adventurous at heart, independent of spirit, and focused, first and last, at getting his job done and doing it well, in the worst of circumstances," says awards judge Jon Lee Anderson about Silva, who is one of the surviving members of the Bang-Bang club, who covered violence in South Africa in the 1990s.

The awards will be presented at the Frontline Club on Thursday 25 November.

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