Associated Press Writer

When Italian photographer Raffaele Ciriello heard the news last year that his dear friend _ a reporter with whom he had shared many a meal and many a rough assignment _ had been shot dead in Afghanistan, he found it hard to believe.

On Wednesday, his own friends and family faced the same pain and disbelief, after this passionate, if unlikely, 42-year-old war photographer was himself killed _ hit by Israeli machine-gun fire while taking pictures in the West Bank, according to witnesses.

Ciriello, a free-lancer accredited for this assignment by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, was the first foreign journalist killed since Israeli-Palestinian fighting broke out in September 2000.

A fellow free-lance photographer, Fabio Muzzi, thought back to November, when Ciriello heard that his friend and colleague Maria Grazia Cutuli, a reporter for Corriere della Sera, had been killed with three other journalists in an ambush in Afghanistan.

"He said he couldn't believe it was real," Muzzi recalled. "These things happen so rapidly, he just couldn't believe that she had died."

He never stopped working, though.

"It's not that he loved danger," Muzzi said Wednesday. "He loved to do things to show us, the world, what was happening.

"He wanted to contribute in some way."

Ciriello did not fit the stereotype of the thrill-seeking war photographer, colleagues and friends said.

In fact, he was trained as a plastic surgeon and only turned to professional photography in his early 30s. Over 10 years, he covered some of the darkest, saddest places on Earth: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sierra Leone.

But he was not a cowboy, said another friend, the prize-winning photographer Francesco Cito.

"His death hit me even harder knowing that he wasn't one of the kamikazes," Cito said.

Marco Del Corona, a deputy news editor for Corriere della Sera, had known Ciriello since the mid-1990s, and repeatedly described him as "kind" _ a word used by many others.

Ciriello's pictures "were of great quality," Del Corona said. "He had this great passion."

In the Corriere della Sera newsroom in Milan, many were shaken by the death of another journalist linked to the paper, Del Corona said. Ciriello was not a staff photographer and therefore not widely known, but the death revived memories of Cutuli's death in Afghanistan, Del Corona said.

"We're all very disturbed, as you can imagine," he said.

After Cutuli died last year, Ciriello set up a tribute, posting dozens of photos he'd taken of her on his Web site. He described her as the "sweetest friend, valued travelmate and skillful writer."

Ciriello's Web site demonstrates his passion for photography. It also makes clear that he knew the pain of what he chronicled through his lens _ the site is named "Postcards from Hell."

Ciriello was married and had an infant daughter, friends said. Family members were unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Italy asked Israel for an investigation into Ciriello's death, while sending a military plane to retrieve his body. Israeli officials expressed regret but said the source of the fire that killed him was not yet confirmed.