"[5] He originally worked in Mosul,[6] where he started to develop a strong reputation from his photos and his tendency to arrive at the scene of attacks quickly, even amid danger.

One of his photos, of a masked insurgent carrying a RPG-7 and a police flak jacket after a November 2004 police station attack, gained particular attention and was described by New York Times journalist Michael Kamber as "one of the seminal images of the war—a single photo that captured Iraq's descent into chaos and the inability of the Iraqi and American governments to protect resources, or pretty much anything else at that point".

[6][7] During his time as a photographer, he had been shot in the leg, had his nose broken more than once, and had been detained and harassed, but his editors said he maintained a sense of energy and optimism.

[7] After their deaths, Reuters screened a photographic tribute to Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh in New York City's Times Square and London's Canary Wharf.

[3] For more than two years after the shooting, Reuters and other organizations sought probes into the deaths of Noor-Eldeen and other journalists killed in Iraq, but the U.S. military withheld key information on the grounds that it was classified.