Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Peter Arnett has died

"LOS ANGELES Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who spent decades dodging bullets and bombs to bring the world eyewitness accounts of war from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq, has died. He was 91. Arnett, who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his Vietnam War coverage for The Associated Press, died Wednesday in Newport Beach and was surrounded by friends and family, said his son Andrew Arnett. He had been suffering from prostate cancer."

"While almost all Western reporters had fled Baghdad in the days before the U.S.-led attack, Arnett stayed. As missiles began raining on the city, he broadcast a live account by cellphone from his hotel room. "There was an explosion right near me, you may have heard," he said in a calm, New Zealand-accented voice moments after the loud boom of a missile strike rattled across the airwaves. As he continued to speak air-raid sirens blared in the background. "I think that took out the telecommunications center," he said of another explosion. "They are hitting the center of the city.""

Peter Arnett spent decades reporting from front-line conflicts, bringing eyewitness accounts from Vietnam to Iraq. He won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his Vietnam War coverage for The Associated Press. He became widely known in 1991 after broadcasting live for CNN from Baghdad during the first Gulf War, remaining as Western reporters fled. During live cellphone reports, explosions and air-raid sirens were audible as he described strikes on the city. He died in Newport Beach at 91, surrounded by friends and family, after suffering from prostate cancer. Fellow correspondent Edith Lederer praised his fearlessness and storytelling.

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