Al-Shahade, a 28-year-old filmmaker and citizen journalist, and cameraman Ahmed al-Assam were filming incursions by security forces in the Homs neighborhood of Safsafa when a shell hit their car and killed them, Amer Matar, an exiled Syrian journalist and a close friend of al-Shahade, told CPJ. News reports suggested that security forces targeted the journalists because they were filming.
Al-Shahade, a prominent filmmaker, was working on a film commemorating the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising, Matar told CPJ. He was studying at Syracuse University in New York, but had left in the fall 2011 semester to return to Syria to cover the unrest and train aspiring citizen journalists.
Al-Shahade's short films can be found on his YouTube channel. In December 2011, he was interviewed by the U.S.-based broadcast program "Democracy Now."