The brothers of Irish man Pierre Zakrzewski, who was killed outside Kyiv in Ukraine, have said the family is on a rollercoaster and memories of the cameraman have been flooding in from relatives and friends since news of his death filtered out.
Pierre Zakrzewski, who had been working for Fox News, was killed alongside Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova when their vehicle was struck by gunfire on Monday.
Journalist Benjamin Hall was also seriously injured in the attack in Horenka, outside the capital. Fox News confirmed he is now "safe and out of Ukraine".
Nick Zakrzewski said efforts are being made to repatriate his brother's body home and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Fox News are coordinating efforts to make this happen.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, Nick said his brother, who grew up and was educated in Dublin, was driven by travel and a real love of photography, which then evolved into videography.
Pierre left college and "travelled and travelled and travelled," he said, adding that the family all thought that this was "spectacular".
Nick described his brother as brave but not reckless.
"He was a calculated risk taker. He looked at risks. He worked out the best way of managing them," he said.
Nick said Pierre was "so proud" of being Irish, the access this granted him for his work and the worldwide view of the Irish.
He said that Pierre always helped people in the areas where he was working and assisted hundreds of people through checkpoints in Afghanistan so they could get on planes leaving the country.
He was always good at keeping in touch with the family, he said, and reassuring them about his safety, even if he could not tell them exactly where he was.
He said Pierre was the uncle that all his nieces and nephews looked up to.
Pierre would want to be remembered for the images he created, Nick said, and added: "Without those images, people wouldn't be able to see what was going on."
'I have a duty to tell their story' - Pierre Zakrzewski
Speaking on the same programme, Greg Zakrzewski said he was following the news about the war in Ukraine and heard a Fox News team had been attacked there.
He said the family is "on autopilot" and what has happened has not registered with them yet.
Greg said his sister called from London yesterday and told him that Pierre had been missing for 12 hours and it did not look good.
The brothers explained that their father came to Ireland from Poland after World War II.
Greg said Pierre changed from being a freelance journalist to working for a media organisation because there were more and more attacks on journalists working in conflict areas, so it became harder to protect himself when working independently.
He said Pierre had some mixed feelings about going to work for Fox News as he "was losing a certain amount of independence".
"Now, we never spoke about it, but I suspect he would probably say something along the lines of: 'Listen, I had no choice'."
War crime investigation
Meanwhile, French prosecutors have opened a war crime investigation into the death of the Franco-Irish cameraman.
The probe by France's specialised anti-terror prosecutors will investigate possible charges of causing "deliberate harm to a person protected by international law" and a "deliberate attack against a civilian who was not taking part in hostilities".
French prosecutors routinely open cases into the violent deaths of citizens overseas.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian sent his condolences today, adding that "armed forces have an obligation to protect journalists in accordance with international humanitarian law".
