A journalist for Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper has been killed by a roadside bomb, while on patrol with US Marines in Afghanistan.

Defense correspondent Rupert Hamer was accompanying the US Marines when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device.

A Marine was also killed and five marines and photographer Philip Coburn were seriously wounded.

Hamer is the second western journalist to die there in as many weeks. NATO forces dealt with over 72-hundred improvised bombs in 2009.