Restrepo Director Tim Hetherington and Getty Photographer Chris Hondros Killed in Libya

Oscar-nominated Restrepo director Tim Hetherington died while working in Libya on Wednesday. The photojournalist was on assignment covering the conflict for Panos Pictures.

The vehicle that he and three other photographers were traveling in was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during a struggle between rebel forces and Qaddafi’s troops in the besieged town of Mistrata, one of the few rebel-held cities in the Western part of the country.

Hetherington and the other three photographers all suffered severe injuries, but Hetherington as well as Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros were killed while his colleagues Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown remain in critical condition. 40-year old Hetherington had been in Libya for less than two weeks, capturing footage of the conflict on the front lines when he and his fellow photographers were attacked.

The award-winning photojournalist and director believed in exposing the problems of the world and the horrors that inhabit the battlefields of modern day conflict and human strife to the public. Through the medium of photography and film, he covered numerous conflict zones, starting in 1999 when he went to Liberia to cover the civil war.

His 2010 Academy-Award nominated film Restrepo chronicles a year in the life of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley, one of the deadliest zones in Afghanistan. The film is named after Juan Restrepo, one of the fallen platoon members. This film made Hetherington widely known, but in the photojournalist world, he has been always highly respected for his work, having won the World Press Photo of the Year in 2007.

His fallen colleague, Chris Hondros, was also a respected photojournalist. His haunting images of Liberia earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 2004 for Breaking News Photography. His images have appeared on the cover of Newsweek and the Economist, as well as the cover of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Hondros completed nine tours in Iraq as a photographer.