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Najib Jobain, the AP’s chief producer in Gaza, said Camilli was a welcome face in Gaza who loved the story so much that he recently turned down an assignment in Iraq to come to the seaside strip.

“He was my brother. I have known him for almost 10 years. He was so happy to be with me working in Gaza,” Jobain said. “He was asked, ’Do you want to go to Irbil or Gaza?’ He said, ’I’ll go to Gaza.”’

From the moment he arrived in the Rome bureau he wanted to learn everything. He was passionate about wanting to tell people’s stories and wanted to be where the story was all the time

Diaa Hadid, a longtime colleague, said she arrived with Camilli in Jerusalem in 2006 and they became close friends. She described him as a “warm, lovely, funny, chain-smoking guy who could never find his own damned lighter, always up for a story and adventure kind of guy.”

“To think he is not here is really just too much,” she said.

Camilli began his career in Rome as an assistant during the illness of Pope John Paul II, while he was still a university student at the Sapienza University of Rome.

Over the years, he covered major stories across Europe and the Middle East, including the independence of Kosovo, the war in Georgia, the arrest of Bosnian Serb military leader Radko Mladic, the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2007 and repeated rounds of fighting between Israel and the militant group, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Most recently, he had covered the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Syrian refugee crisis.

“From the moment he arrived in the Rome bureau he wanted to learn everything,” said Maria Grazia Murru, the AP’s senior producer in Rome. “He was passionate about wanting to tell people’s stories and wanted to be where the story was all the time. He wanted to learn everything and be the first, he was never happy waiting for images to happen. … I will miss his enthusiasm, his Roman accent and his smile.”