His final photo was of the bomber that killed him: the last journalist to die before Assad fell

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The war was almost over when death came for Anas Alkharboutli. On 4 December last year, Bashar al-Assad’s forces, on the brink of collapse, killed the photojournalist in an airstrike near Hama. He was 32 years old.

“We were excited to go to the frontline,” says Omar Haj Kadour, a photographer who was with Alkharboutli on the day he was killed. “Things were finally going well for the opposition.”

Two men in a snowy landscape, one holding a camera

Alkharboutli and Kadour were among a group of journalists who had teamed up to cover the lightning assault of the rebels at the end of November 2024. The advance would eventually bring an end – after 13 years of civil war – to Assad’s regime, after the Syrian president fled into Russian exile on 8 December. But Alkharboutli did not live to see it.

“We’d better move away from this bridge. Let’s split up the group,” Omar recalls Alkharboutli warning them on the day he died; he was, as usual, the first to point out looming danger and instruct his colleagues on how to keep themselves safe.

In the end, he couldn’t protect himself. A blurry photo of the jet that dropped the missile that would kill him would become the last picture he took.

The injuries to his lower legs were so severe that he bled out on his way to the hospital. His final words, say his friends, were a prayer. Alkharboutli became the last of 283 journalists to have been killed since the start of the revolution in 2011.

Five girls sit on a dirt floor in a tent with pencils and paper in their hands

Over the past decade, Syria has ranked as one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to work.

Alkharboutli did not set out to become a journalist. When the revolution started and the regime increasingly cracked down on peaceful protest, he quickly dropped his electrical engineering studies and decided to instead document what was happening in his homeland.

At first shooting low-quality footage with a mobile phone, he soon pushed his eldest brother Abu Zuhair to get him a camera. “He was a quiet person, but when he wanted something he could be relentless. There was no way to say no to him,” says Abu.

After a friend put Alkharboutli in touch with a journalist at Al Jazeera, he started filing photos and videos of government crackdowns on peaceful protesters under the name “Anas Damascus”.

A crowd of men and boys, some holding Syrian flags

His work became even more important in 2013, when rockets carrying the nerve agent sarin killed more than 1,000 people in his home region in the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus. Despite having previously declared the potential use of chemical weapons a “red line”, the US administration under Barack Obama did not take action against the regime.

In 2018, Alkharboutli was displaced to the north-western province of Idlib, controlled at that point by forces opposed to the Assad regime, where he started to work for the German press agency dpa.

Over the next years he would win a number of awards for his work, including a Sony world photography award for a series of images of children practising karate in the village of Aljiina, Syria.

Despite the accolades, his colleagues say he never sought the spotlight. “I had to announce his awards – he would have not otherwise. Anas didn’t care,” says Kadour.

In the foreground is an out-of-focus injured man with a bandage on his arm. To his right a girl with blood on her face is being attended to by a doctor while another man watches

Once, when Alkharboutli found out that another journalist had been awarded a prize with photos allegedly stolen from him, he just shrugged. The award organisers urged him to complain, but he never did.

Although an introvert, his home in Idlib was a gathering spot for reporters based in the area. “His house was a home for so many of us,” says the photographer Ali Haj Suleiman. After strenuous days out in the field, he says, they gathered there at night to order fast food, smoke shisha, play cards and plan their next reporting trip.

One of Alkharboutli’s biggest dreams was to see his brother Abdul Rahman again, who had been detained by the regime. “He always said: ‘When we win, I will go to Sednaya prison and free Abdul with my own hands,’” says his eldest brother, Abu.

Two young boys sit in a burnt-out car in a dump. One holds a mortar shell which is half as tall as he is

In December, after the fall of the Assad regime, the family obtained Abdul’s death certificate. He had died in prison in 2014.

Despite a sense of deep anger over the brutality of the regime, Abu says Alkharboutli never considered taking up arms, as so many other young men in Syria did. “He considered his camera his weapon.”

However, in the weeks before his death, friends and family say he had become increasingly wary of the war. Four days before he died, he sent Abu a photo of a notebook describing where he kept his money and other important personal details “in case anything happens to me”.

A man holds a flag standing on top of a statue of a military horse and rider on a plinth, against a blue sky

Abu says he was upset and worried about him. “Anas called me 10 times that day to reassure me he was OK.”

When, on 4 December, the phone didn’t stop buzzing in his pocket, Abu didn’t have to check to know that something had happened to his brother.

Celebrating the long awaited end of the Assad dictatorship has been bittersweet for Alkharboutli’s family and colleagues. “We might feel joy, but something is always missing,” says Kadour.

Three man carry a body on a stretcher across burned ground strewn with ash and debris

At a ceremony at Damascus Opera House this week, dozens of war reporters were honoured with medals of courage. Kadour placed his on top of a picture of Alkharboutli. “He deserves it more than I do,” he says.

Yet, Abu believes his brother achieved what he wanted to: he documented what was happening in Syria. “That the world never acted is on them.”