Hundreds mourn AP journalist killed in Gaza

Several hundred mourners pack the ornate cathedral of this hilltop Tuscan town today to remember Associated Press video journalist Simone Camilli as a committed storyteller who found personal and professional contentment in the Middle East.

An image of Camilli, leaning pensively over the balcony of the AP office in Gaza with smoke billowing behind him, stands near the simple unfinished wooden casket that accompanies his body back to Italy, and which his family chose to retain in deference to his preference for simplicity.

“You might think he was a thrill-seeker. Simone wasn’t one of those,” says friend and AP colleague Chris Slaney. “His best work was filmed far from the front lines. He was proud of items which were simple, human stories well-told.”

Video images made by Camilli are projected in the cathedral complex in Pitigliano, and mourners streaming to the funeral Mass were visibly moved as they pause to watch.

AP chief executive Gary Pruitt, speaking outside the cathedral, lauds Camilli’s commitment “to tell the human side of the story in a war” during nearly a decade with AP.

Camilli was killed Wednesday in the Gaza Strip when leftover ordnance believed to have been dropped in an Israeli airstrike blew up. Also killed was freelance Palestinian translator Ali Shehda Abu Afash, who was buried yesterday. Four police engineers also died in the explosion and AP photographer Hatem Moussa was among three people badly wounded.

— The Associated Press.