From the way the events are described in Lamentations 2:1–22, it can be derived that the author is a close eyewitness to these events. It is also evident that he recorded his impressions immediately after the event; this can be surmised from the following examples: the desperation of the people and their leaders (Lamentations 2:9–10); the children dying of hunger (Lamentations 2:12) and the triumph of the enemies (Lamentations 2:16).1
1 How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud! He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel; he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.