LONDON (AFP) – Relatives and fellow journalists on Friday paid their final respects to award-winning war photographer Tim Hetherington at his funeral in Britain after his death last month in Libya.
About 500 mourners gathered at a central London church to remember Hetherington, a 40-year-old Briton with dual US nationality, who was killed on April 20 in a mortar attack in the western Libyan city of Misrata.
He died alongside Chris Hondros, a 41-year-old US photographer for Getty, a partner agency of AFP, as the pair covered intense fighting between Moamer Kadhafi's forces and rebels.
At the funeral on Friday, Hetherington's mother Judith read out one of her son's favourite poems, William Wordsworth's "Daffodils".
"Let us now go forward in love, hope, forgiveness, compassion, courage and hope, and remember, like Timothy, to dance with life," she said.
The photojournalist, who lived in New York, worked for magazine Vanity Fair and received plaudits in recent years for his work in Afghanistan.
He was nominated for an Oscar for the documentary, "Restrepo", which followed a platoon of US soldiers deployed in the war-torn country.
Hetherington won the World Press Photo of the Year award in 2007 for a picture of an exhausted US soldier on the frontline in Afghanistan.
Sebastian Junger, a US journalist who made "Restrepo" with Hetherington, told mourners at the funeral: "Tim devoted his life to documenting the human cost of war, and he has become a part of that cost now."
Father James Campbell, the priest who officiated at the service, praised Hetherington as "an above-average example of his generation."
"His mission in life was to improve himself, to climb the ladder of his career, and expose the horrors of what human beings do to one another, and the devastating effects on men, women and children of war," he said.
"People who engage in these dangerous missions can end up succeeding, but also, as we see today, can end up giving their lives."
Rebels in Misrata broke a two-month siege by Kadhafi's forces on Wednesday.
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