A Syrian photographer working for the German press agency DPA has been killed in an airstrike in the Hama countryside, where the government forces of Bashar al-Assad are involved in fierce fighting with an advancing rebel opposition group, writes CNN.

DPA, or Deutsche Presse-Agentur, said its photographer Anas Alkharboutli was killed while “accompanying and reporting on the advance of the revel alliance,” in a story published on its website Wednesday.

A local journalist who witnessed the strike told CNN the 32-year-old photojournalist had been near the town of Morek, about 27 km north of Hama, at the time.

The northern countryside of Hama is currently the site of fierce fighting between government troops and a rebel coalition whose recent taking of Aleppo, the country’s second-biggest city, has reignited the country’s long-running civil war.

The Syrian defense ministry said Wednesday it was attacking the rebels “on all their axes of movement” and that airstrikes were being carried out by warplanes from both Syria and Russia, which backs the Assad regime.

DPA said Alkharboutli had been waiting at a bridge with journalists from other media outlets when their position was bombed twice, “presumably by Syrian government warplanes”.

He died at the scene and was buried in Idlib Wednesday, DPA said.

DPA’s editor-in-chief Sven Gösmann paid tribute to the award-winning Alkharboutli, saying “With his pictures, he not only documented the horrors of war, but always worked for the truth”.