The China Mail - Pulitzer-winning combat reporter Peter Arnett dies at 91

He had been suffering from prostate cancer.

Arnett, who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his coverage of the Vietnam War for The Associated Press, rose to international fame in his decades-long career covering conflicts from Vietnam to El Salvador to the Gulf.

He broke onto the international scene as a wire-service correspondent in Vietnam from 1962 until the war’s end in 1975, dodging bullets as he accompanied troops on missions.

He was among the last reporters in Saigon as it fell to the communist-backed North Vietnamese.

Arnett stayed with the AP until 1981, when he joined CNN and would soon rise to broadcast stardom.

In 1991, Arnett landed in Baghdad for the outbreak of the first Gulf War, where he interviewed then-president Saddam Hussein.

His live front-line broadcasts -- in some cases relayed by cell phone -- would make him a household name.

He resigned from CNN in 1999 after the network retracted a report Arnett narrated claiming deadly Sarin nerve gas had been used on deserting American soldiers in Laos in 1970.

He went on to cover the second Gulf War for NBC and National Geographic.

Arnett left NBC in 2003 after giving an interview to Iraqi state television in which he was critical of the US military's strategy.

Arnett was born on November 13, 1934 in Riverton, New Zealand.

Arnett, who later became a naturalized American citizen, began his career as a reporter working for a local newspaper, the Southland Times, before going on to work for an English-language paper in Thailand.

In 1995, he published his memoir, "Live From the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World’s War Zones."

Arnett, who lived in Southern California since 2014, is survived by his wife, Nina Nguyen, and their children, Elsa and Andrew, US media said.

K.Lam--ThChM