Torpekai Amarkhel was fleeing the Taliban when she died alongside her husband and two children in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Italy last month. A third child is still missing.
Torpekai Amarkhel, a 42-year-old Afghan journalist, died in the shipwreck at Steccato di Cutro in Calabria late last month.
Afghan news sources report that her husband and two children are also believed to have died, while a third child, age 7, is still missing.
UN employee
Torpekai Amarkhel worked with the United Nations in Kabul on the project "UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) news" after a career in national Afghan radio.
Her UN colleagues expressed their condolences, calling the news of her death "devastating."
Before her life was cut short on the Mediterranean, Torpekai was working on a photography project on the condition of women in Afghanistan.
After receiving the news of her death, Torpekai's sister Mida arrived in Crotone via Rotterdam.
She gave the mandate to the legal team who arrived in the city to assist the families of the victims to represent her in the judicial case that will take place following the inquiry into the wreck carried out by the Prosecutor's Office.
Dashed hopes and escape from the Taliban regime
After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2002, "journalism had become a new frontier for women in the country," Torpekai wrote in 2017 while working with an all-female team of radio journalists.
"There are more women today who exercise this profession," she said. "But in the field, outside the office, they show-up wearing a burqa, they do their interviews while wearing it. It is not easy to convince them that this is an important job for them".
Torpekai Amarkhel hoped more could be done, without ever imagining that just a few years later the country would fall into the grips of the Taliban, pushing her to escape and board a ship that ended up killing her and her loved ones.