Namir Noor-Eldeen ( ar, نمير نورالدين; September 1, 1984 – July 12, 2007) was an Iraqi

war photographer ''War Photographer'' is a documentary by Christian Frei about the photographer James Nachtwey. As well as telling the story of an iconic man in the field of war photography, the film addresses the broader scope of ideas common to all those in ...

for

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was esta ...

. Noor-Eldeen, his assistant, Saeed Chmagh, and eight others were fired upon by U.S. military forces in the

New Baghdad New Baghdad or Baghdad Al-Jidida ( ar, بغداد الجديدة) is one of nine administrative districts in Baghdad, Iraq. This district has nine Neighborhood Advisory Councils (NAC) and a District Advisory Council. It is located east of the city c ...

district of

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

, Iraq, during an airstrike on July 12, 2007. It is claimed in an official report from the

United States Department of the Army The United States Department of the Army (DA) is one of the three military departments within the Department of Defense of the U.S. The Department of the Army is the federal government agency within which the United States Army (U.S.) is or ...

that the group of 10 was carrying at least one

RPG-7 The RPG-7 (russian: link=no, РПГ-7, Ручной Противотанковый Гранатомёт, Ruchnoy Protivotankoviy Granatomyot) is a portable, reusable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank, rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Th ...

and one

AK-47 The AK-47, officially known as the ''Avtomat Kalashnikova'' (; also known as the Kalashnikov or just AK), is a gas-operated assault rifle that is chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Russian small-arms d ...

, and that Noor-Eldeen's camera and attached zoom lens may have been mistaken for an additional RPG. Noor-Eldeen and seven others were killed during the first strike.

Early life and career

Noor-Eldeen was born on September 1, 1984, in Mosul, Iraq. He developed an interest in photography and video from his family, and started training in those crafts. He was one of the first photographers trained by the

news agency as part of a strategy to employ photojournalists with strong local knowledge and access to areas considered too dangerous for Western photographers to work in. Chris Helgren, former Reuters chief photographer who instigated the agency's plan, called Noor-Eldeen one of the star recruits of the initial recruitment stage, and said, "In Mosul, he started from nothing and is now the pre-eminent photographer in Northern Iraq." He originally worked in Mosul, where he started to develop a strong reputation from his photos and his tendency to arrive at the scene of attacks quickly, even amid danger. One of his photos, of a masked insurgent carrying a RPG-7 and a police

flak jacket The two components of an obsolete British military flak vest. On the left, the nylon vest. On the right, the several layers of ballistic nylon that provide the actual protection A flak jacket or flak vest is a form of body armor. A flak jacke ...

after a November 2004 police station attack, gained particular attention and was described by ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' journalist Michael Kamber as "one of the seminal images of the war—a single photo that captured Iraq's descent into chaos and the inability of the Iraqi and American governments to protect resources, or pretty much anything else at that point". Noor-Eldeen was transferred to Baghdad after he started receiving threats in Mosul from insurgents unhappy with his photos. During his time as a photographer, he had been shot in the leg, had his nose broken more than once, and had been detained and harassed, but his editors said he maintained a sense of energy and optimism.

Airstrike and death

On July 12, 2007, after several skirmishes in the area, two American

AH-64 Apache The Boeing AH-64 Apache () is an American twin- turboshaft attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement and a tandem cockpit for a crew of two. It features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night v ...

helicopters observed a group of people milling around on a street in Baghdad. They reported some in that group to be armed, presumed them to be Iraqi insurgents, and fired on them. The helicopters also fired on a van being driven by a man with his two children inside that stopped to evacuate the wounded. Both children were wounded. Noor-Eldeen and his Reuters driver, Saeed Chmagh, were among those killed in the attack. Noor-Eldeen was 22 years old at the time of his death. Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh were the fifth and sixth Reuters employees killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion began. All six were killed by American soldiers. Mohammed Ameen, another Reuters photographer and one of Noor-Eldeen's closest friends, found his body in a dilapidated Iraqi morgue and arranged for the body to be preserved until his funeral. After their deaths, Reuters screened a photographic tribute to Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh in New York City's

Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...

and London's

Canary Wharf Canary Wharf is an area of London, England, located near the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf is defined by the Greater London Authority as being part of London's central business district, alongside Central Lon ...

Video release

For more than two years after the shooting, Reuters and other organizations sought probes into the deaths of Noor-Eldeen and other journalists killed in Iraq, but the U.S. military withheld key information on the grounds that it was classified. The military also refused to release a video taken from one of the gunships that captured the complete sequence and radio communication during the shootings. On April 5, 2010,

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

published a video titled '' Collateral Murder'' on its website, which shows part of the military video. WikiLeaks said it acquired the video from military whistle-blowers and viewed it after breaking the encryption code. The shootings and Noor-Eldeen's deaths are detailed in ''

The Good Soldiers ''The Good Soldiers'' (2009) is a non-fiction Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in im ...

'', a 2009 nonfiction book by

David Finkel David Louis Finkel (born October 28, 1955) is an American journalist. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 as a staff writer at ''The Washington Post''. As of January 2017, he was national enterprise editor at the ''Post''. He has also worked for th ...

References

External links

Collateral Murder

site bringing to light formerly classified US military footage
Remembering Namir Noor-Eldeen
(''The New York Times.)'' Text and slideshow. {{DEFAULTSORT:Noor-Eldeen, Namir War photographers killed while covering the Iraq War Reuters people Photojournalism controversies 2000s in mass media 2010s in mass media 1984 births 2007 deaths Articles containing video clips Filmed killings Iraqi photojournalists Deaths by American airstrikes People from Mosul 20th-century journalists