By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press
Two German journalists working for the country's national broadcaster and traveling on their own through northern Afghanistan were killed by gunmen Saturday, the first foreign journalists murdered here since late 2001.

The two — a man and a woman — were traveling in a Toyota four-wheel drive through Baghlan province and had stopped just outside a village, where they set up a tent to spend the night, said Mohammad Azim Hashami, the provincial police chief.

They were killed by gunfire from an AK-47 in the early morning hours, he said.

"The sound of the shooting was heard by some of the villagers, who ran toward that area," said Hashami. "They found a tent and they found the two journalists dead."

Hashami said nothing was stolen from the journalists, including their vehicle.

There is little daily violence in the northern province of Baghlan, compared with Afghanistan's volatile south, but militant fighters allied with the renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar roam the area. A Canadian aid worker helping to build a school was killed in the province in July.

The journalists killed Saturday worked for the German news agency Deutsche Welle, according to Wakil Asas, a reporter for the company in Kabul. Asas said the two were not based in Kabul and had only been in Afghanistan a short time.

Deutsche Welle, Germany's state-owned broadcast outlet, produces news for radio, television and the Internet.

The journalists were traveling on their own and were not embedded with a military unit, said Maj. Dominic Whyte, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Their deaths were confirmed by Afghanistan's Interior Ministry.

No foreign journalists have been killed in Afghanistan since late 2001, when eight were killed during the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban regime, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists' Web site. A freelance reporter from New Zealand died in a car accident in 2001, CPJ said.

An Afghan journalist who arrived at the scene of a suicide bombing in July in the southern city of Kandahar was killed by a second suicide bombing at the same spot, CPJ said.