Two western journalists killed in Libya

Two of the world's most acclaimed war photographers, both based in Brooklyn, were killed in Libya on Wednesday. A mortar round had landed on the group of British and US photographers.

One of them Tim Hetherington, an Oscar-nominated British film director and war photographer.Vanity Fair, for which Hetherington was a contributing photographer, confirmed the death of the 41-year-old who covered numerous conflicts and won the 2007 World Press Photo Award for his coverage of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Chris Hondros, also 41, suffered grave head injuries in the same mortar attack, said medics in the western port city, and died hours later from his wounds. Hondros, born in New York to Greek and German immigrant parents, had survived some of the world's worst conflicts of the last 20 years, including Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Kashmir, the West Bank, Afghanistan and Iraq. His work in Liberia made him a Pulitzer finalist.

Hondros recently photographed the riots in Cairo's Tahir Square, barely escaping rocks and charging camels. He compared it to "slave revolts in the Pharonic times four thousand years ago."

Two other colleagues, Guy Martin, a freelance photographer working for Panos, and photographer Michael Brown, working for Corbis, were also wounded in the attack.