Photographer Ali Mustafa, killed on Sunday in a bomb blast in Syria, was the son of a Portuguese mother and Pakistani father.
His half-sister Justina Rosa Botelho told reporters this week that her brother had been “determined” to show the world “all the horrible things that are happening”.
Mustafa, 29, who grew up in Canada and worked as a freelance, hadn’t even told his family that he was covering the ongoing conflict that has now seen over 136,000 people killed since it began three years ago. Justina Botelho said he had called home the week before, saying he was in Turkey.
“He wanted our mother to know he was okay,” she told reporters at AP. “He never told me he was in Syria. I suppose he was trying to hide this fact.”
The family only learnt of Mustafa’s death when activists sent them a photograph of his body.
The same blast that killed him killed seven other people and was thought to have been caused by bombs dropped by Syrian forces’ planes in Hadariyeh, an area of Aleppo controlled by rebels.
