The photographer behind those haunting assassination images
PLEASE NOTE: Some of the images below are graphic and may be disturbing to some viewers.
Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici was covering what he thought was going to be an everyday photo-op with Andrel Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, at a photo gallery in Ankara, the Turkish capital, on Monday.
It was anything but.
In a first-person account for the AP, Ozbilici later Monday shared what it was like to capture images of the scene just as the ambassador was shot and in the harrowing moments following the shooting despite the danger. (Karlov, 62, was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead and police killed the shooter, identified as Mevlut Mert Altintas, in a shootout.)
He described the terrifying situation.
"The gunshots, at least eight of them, were loud in the pristine art gallery. Pandemonium erupted. People screamed, hid behind columns and under tables and lay on the floor. I was afraid and confused, but found partial cover behind a wall and did my job: taking photographs," he wrote.
The photographer even captured the would-be gunman just before the assassination. Ozbilici said when he looked at the photos later and saw the shooter behind the ambassador, he was shocked how much he looked "like a friend, or a bodyguard."
Ozbilici said he learned that the gunman, identified as 22-year-old Altintas, had been shouting about Aleppo and Russia's military role in the ongoing Syrian civil war, but at the time Ozbilici could only tell that he was "agitated" and speaking in Arabic. (The AP reported he shouted in both Turkish and Arabic.)
He was overwhelmed by the situation, but not for long, "It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened: A man had died in front of me; a life had disappeared before my eyes."
After snapping several shots of the shooter, dying ambassador and the scared crowd, the photographer was escorted out of the building with other attendees at the event. He made it out safely, but he said while it was happening he thought of "friends and colleagues who have died while taking photographs in conflict zones over the years."
On the social travel network Wayn, Ozbilici has a profile filled with photos -- many of them with a camera in hand. He profile describes himself as a 56-year-old Turkish man living in Ankara. His "about me" section says, "I always believed (and experienced) that the most important thing in life is to be happy and to be able to make good people (or just your friends) happy!"
People took to Twitter to share their admiration for the photographer and how brave he was for catching a terrifying moment in history.
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Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
