US Journo Dies in 'Sickening' Homs Shelling

Reporter Marie Colvin's last video said, 'I saw a baby die today'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 22, 2012 5:46 AM CST

Two veteran war journalists were killed as Syrian government forces shelled the city of Homs, opposition activists say. The pair were named as Marie Colvin, an American working for Britain's Sunday Times, and French photographer Remi Ochlik, Reuters reports. Three other journalists were injured when a shell hit a house being used as a makeshift media center by the opposition. Colvin, the only British newspaper journalist in Homs, recorded a video for the BBC yesterday in which she described the government attack on the city as "absolutely sickening."

"I watched a little baby die today,” she said. “Absolutely horrific. There is just shells, rockets, and tank fire pouring into civilian areas of this city and it is just unrelenting." In 2010, she spoke about the dangers of her career at a ceremony honoring fallen journalists, the Telegraph reports. "Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice," she said. "Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price." Colvin was featured in the 2005 documentary on female war correspondents Bearing Witness, and had previously lost an eye to a grenade in Sri Lanka in 2002. (More Marie Colvin stories.)

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