Anas Alkharboutli was fatally injured in a missile attack just four days before the president fled to Russia. His colleagues and friends explain why his life was more exceptional than his death
Anas Alkharboutli was fatally injured in a missile attack just four days before the president fled to Russia. His colleagues and friends explain why his life was more exceptional than his death
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.
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.