VC hero Apiata 'there to fight' - photographer

"Tired and sweaty" Victoria Cross hero Willie Apiata was photographed in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul earlier this week, moments after he came out of a building where three bodies were found.

Photographs of Corporal Apiata, a member of New Zealand's elite Special Air Service unit, and another SAS soldier were published by several New Zealand media outlets yesterday and today after being taken by French freelance photographer Philip Poupin.

He told The Dominion Post he saw the elite Kiwi soldiers emerge from a building where the insurgents' bodies were later found, after the Taliban attack on Afghanistan's Presidential Palace on Monday.

The publication of the photographs broke what the Defence Force called a "robust gentleman's agreement" it had with the media not to reveal SAS soldiers on active deployment overseas because it could put them in danger.

Poupin said he saw a "tired and sweaty" Cpl Apiata emerge from the building where the bodies of the three insurgents were found.

"They were really close to the insurgents ... they were there to fight," Poupin told the newspaper.

He said when the battle subsided he went inside the building and saw the three bodies.

"I can't tell you if [the New Zealanders] were directly fighting with the insurgents ... but I could say they were right there," he told the newspaper.

Prime Minister John Key said earlier this week, the SAS's had a "very limited" role in the battle and and fired no shots.

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp said yesterday that the SAS members were not as close to the fighting as Poupin suggested.

Mr Key said Cpo Apiata would probably stay in Afghanistan until the end of his deployment.

Dominion Post editor Bernadette Courtney said the paper published Cpl Apiata's photograph because it was the first picture of New Zealand SAS troops in Kabul after they responded to a Taliban attack.

She said Cpl Apiata was a war hero who requested to return to Afghanistan. He was paraded in front of the public and the media here and around the world when he won his Victoria Cross.

"We don't believe media here have placed Corporal Apiata or any of the other SAS members at any greater risk than they already are," she said.

The New Zealand Herald said today the journalist who broke the story of the SAS joining the counterattack against a Taliban strike was surprised at the reaction in New Zealand.

Afghanistan-based New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, in a blog posted to the newspaper's website yesterday, wrote: "New Zealand? At war? Who knew? Not a lot of New Zealanders, apparently."

"The news ... that a team of commandos from New Zealand had joined Afghan soldiers at the scene caused a sensation in the little country off the coast of Australia," he wrote.

Filkins said he spotted the New Zealand soldiers as they moved in to Pashtunistan Square, the site of the Taliban attack, which killed five people and wounded at least 70.

He said one told him to: "Get out of here".

"I saw the patch on his arm announcing his country. Others were more friendly. 'Can't talk now, mate,' said another with a smile."

The Herald's assistant editor John Roughan said the paper stood by the decision to use the picture which, he said, had real news value.

"The soldiers were in a public street, in a major city, visible to anybody, wearing their uniforms, carrying their guns, photographed as the New Zealand SAS," he said.

Cpl Apiata won his Victoria Cross in Afghanistan for rescuing a wounded comrade in 2004.