Golestan, 52, died when he stepped on the mine as he climbed out of his car in the town of Kifri on Wednesday.

BBC producer Stuart Hughes, also caught in the blast, suffered injuries to his foot, but correspondent Jim Muir and their local translator were unhurt.

Mohammad Sohofi, Iran's deputy minister of culture, expressed his regret over the death of Golestan, who he described as "an artist known throughout the world".

"The cruel US-British-led war on Iraq has not only taken the lives of hundreds of civilians, including innocent children and women but also journalists such as Kaveh Golestan," he said in comments carried by the Iranian Student News Agency.

Golestan won acclaim for his coverage of Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 and the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja on March 16, 1988 by the regime of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, which killed nearly 5,000 people.

In 1991, he produced a report for British television on censorship and the plight of intellectuals in Iran. As a result his press card was seized by the Iranian authorities and he was banned him from all journalistic activities.

Three years later, however, he was given permission to work as a cameraman for APTV, the forerunner of the Associated Press Television Network (APTN).

In February 2000, he joined the BBC's Tehran bureau in a freelance capacity.

Golestan, considered one of the best photojournalists in Iran, leaves behind a wife and a 19-year-old son in London.

On Wednesday, BBC news director Richard Sambrook paid tribute to him, saying he was "an outstanding photojournalist who had worked in support of freedom of expression in his native Iran and elsewhere."

He is the third journalist working for the British media to die in Iraq in the current conflict which began on March 20.

SPACE.WIRE