Vale: Bob Simon

Veteran US reporter Bob Simons, best known for 60 Minutes (US), has died aged 73.

Simons, was a passenger killed in a car accident in New York on Wednesday evening. Police found him unconscious and unresponsive, with injuries to his head and torso but he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Simon, whose reports have also featured in the Australian 60 Minutes, joined the show in 1996 and has covered most major overseas conflicts since the 1960s.

LA Times reports that during the early days of the Persian Gulf War, Simon and three members of his CBS News crew were arrested and held captive for 40 days in Iraq, interrogated, beaten with canes and truncheons, and starved by their captors.