Kaveh Golestan, a Pulitzer prize winning freelance cameraman who worked for the BBC's Tehran bureau, was killed on Wednesday when he stepped on a landmine near the town of Kifri in northern Iraq.

He is survived by a wife and a 19-year-old son.

Producer Stuart Hughes, who was working with Golestan, was injured, but correspondent Jim Muir and a local translator escaped unhurt.

The incident happened when the four were driving near Kifri.

Golestan got out of the car and stepped on the landmine. He was killed instantly, a BBC statement said.

Hughes, who is from Cardiff, is being treated at a US medical unit near Sulaymaniyah.

"We have been in touch with their families and are offering them all the support we can," the BBC's director of news, Richard Sambrook, said.

"Kaveh Golestan was an outstanding photojournalist who had worked in support of freedom of expression in his native Iran and elsewhere and was well-known to many Western news organisations.

"He had worked with the BBC for many years."