KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan president on Monday condemned the killing of David Gilkey, a veteran news photographer and video editor for National Public Radio, and Afghan journalist Zabihullah Tamanna, who died in an insurgent ambush the day before while on assignment in southern Afghanistan.

Gilkey and Tamanna were traveling with an Afghan army unit near Marjah in Helmand province on Sunday afternoon when the convoy came under fire and their vehicle was struck, the network’s spokeswoman, Isabel Lara, said in a statement. Two other NPR journalists, Tom Bowman and producer Monika Evstatieva, were traveling with them and were not hurt.

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani called the attack cowardly and “completely against all the principles and values of Islam and humanity, and against all international laws.”

In a statement from the presidential palace, Ghani was quoted as saying that the Taliban do not distinguish between the military, civilians and journalists, and that they killed Gilkey and Tamanna as the two were reporting on the war. He offered condolences to the families of the two journalists.

Later Monday, Ghani travelled to Helmand to assess the security situation in the rich opium-poppy field region, which gives the world most of its heroin, controlled by the Taliban.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul and U.S. Army Gen. John. W. Nicholson, commander of the U.S.-NATO resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, also offered condolences.

“David and Zabihullah, in particular, spent years in Afghanistan tirelessly endeavoring to tell the story of the Afghan people,” Nicholson said in a statement. “We have the utmost respect for their work as well as those others that endure the hardships that come with reporting from conflict zones.”