Bashar al-Attar, a photographer for the pro-opposition Arbin Unified Media Office, died from injuries sustained in an airstrike on March 12, 2018, in the rebel-held eastern Ghouta area of Syria, outside of Damascus, according to his employer and the Syrian Journalists Association.
Al-Attar was hit by shrapnel while he was helping civilians wounded in an earlier airstrike that he had been covering in the city of Arbin, according to Abu Abdo, a member of the Arbin Unified Media Office’s board of directors. The photographer sustained several serious injuries and residents took the journalist to a nearby hospital, where he died, Abdo told CPJ.
Abdo said that the airstrike was carried out by the pro-government Russian-led coalition.
Abdo told CPJ that al-Attar worked as a photographer for the Arbin Unified Media Office for a year and primarily documented how the war affected Arbin. The independent media organization, which supports the internationally recognized Syrian opposition, is documenting the impact of the airstrikes carried out by pro-President Bashar Assad forces in Arbin.
Eastern Ghouta had been under constant shelling, airstrikes, and rocket fire from Assad forces and their allies with hundreds killed and thousands wounded in the first few weeks of the offensive, according to a March 13, 2018 report by the London-based human rights group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.