Jeroen Oerlemans

Jeroen Oerlemans  was a Dutch photographer and war correspondent who reported mainly from the Near East and Afghanistan. He was shot by snipers in the Libyan city Sirte.

Oerlemans studied political sciences at the Amsterdam University and thereafter photojournalism at the London College of Communications.

As a freelance photographer he covered severals areas of conflict, such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Pakistan and nearly all countries of the Near East such as Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. His photographs have been published in magazines like Newsweek and Time Magazine, in daily newspapers such as The Guardian or theInternational Herald Tribune, in the Sunday Times, the Courrier International and numerous other publications. He also got a couple of awards.

When not on assignment he lived in Amsterdam with his wife and children. He was represented by Panos Pictures, an agency for photography based in London and by Hollandse Hoogte in the Netherlands. In the past years he was mostly active in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. In July 2012, Oerlemans and the British photographer John Cantlie were kidnapped in northern Syria and detained for one week. They were freed by fighters of the Free Syrian Army. In September and the beginning of October 2016 he was on assignment in Libya, reporting for the Belgian weekly Knack. In the town of Sirte heavy fighting was going on between pro-goverment Libyan forces and the ISIL in Libya. The photographer was shot dead by snipers attached to the Libyan arm of Islamic State. He was taken to a hospital but doctors could do nothing for him.

According to journalist Joanie de Rijke, Knack employee, Oerlemans was wearing a bulletproof vest and he had a helmet on,

″but the ball hit him on the side, just at the opening of his vest. [...] The only consolation is that he was immediately dead, he did not suffer in any case.″

The Foreign Ministry confirmed his death on Sunday, October 3, 2016.