Jeroen Oerlemans

The Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands confirmed Oerlemans' death on Sunday, 2 October 2016. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the photographer was the third journalist to be killed in Libya this year. Bert Koenders, the Dutch Foreign Minister, paid tribute to him, saying "Oerlemans was a journalist who went through where others stopped, driven to bring the news in pictures, especially in the trouble spots of the world. A great photographer is gone."

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-government Libyan forces and the ISIL in Libya. Oerlemans had been scheduled to return home Monday, but 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 bullet 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.″

Jeroen Oerlemans (15 May 1970 – 2 October 2016) was a Dutch photographer and war correspondent who reported mainly from the Near East and Afghanistan. His photographs were published in Newsweek, Time, The Guardian, International Herald Tribune, The Sunday Times and Courrier International. He was killed by an Islamic State sniper in the Libyan city of Sirte. He had previously been kidnapped whilst working in Syria alongside British journalist John Cantlie. The Jeroen Oerlemans Foundation is dedicated to his life's work, and finances accumulated from the purchase of certain pieces via the Foundation's website are dedicated to an educational fund for his three children.