Al-Baali, 20, died of shrapnel wounds he sustained from government shelling of Qaboun district in Damascus in early June, according to news reports. Al-Baali had left Qaboun and was on his way to cover Jobar, another neighborhood torn apart by the conflict, when he was injured by the mortar strike, the reports said. The journalist was hospitalized for several weeks in a coma before he died.
Al-Baali, who was also popularly known as "Mohamed Moaz," began filming and documenting the conflict in Syria when the uprising began in March 2011, The New York Times reported. He covered protests and clashes between the Syrian government and rebel forces for the pro-opposition TV channel Orient News and provided interviews to several other news outlets, the reports said.
Al-Baali was also one of the first journalists to enter the besieged neighborhood of Daraya in southwest Damascus in August 2012 when hundreds of civilians were killed by government shelling, according to news reports.