Journalist Marie Colvin Died In Syria While Exposing 'The Horrors Of War'

Killing Continues In Syria, Two Western Journalists Among Victims
February 22, 2012
by Mark Memmott

There's more deadly news today from Syria:

"Syrian troops and militia loyal to President Bashar Assad captured and then shot dead 27 young men in northern villages and two foreign journalists were killed in shelling of the besieged city of Homs, activists said on Wednesday." (Reuters)

The Associated Press adds that "a Syrian activist said two foreign journalists were killed Wednesday by Syrian government forces shelling the restive central city of Homs. The report could not be immediately confirmed.

Update at 7:50 a.m. ET. Marie Colvin In 2010: "It's Really Never Been More Dangerous To Be A War Correspondent."

Marie Colvin, one of the reporters said to have been killed today, was an occasional guest on NPR broadcasts, reporting from trouble spots around the world. In 2010, she talked about the dangers that war correspondents face. There's video here.

As The New York Times writes: "Valérie Pécresse, the French government spokeswoman, identified the dead as Marie Colvin, an American reporter working for The Sunday Times of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer."

Update at 7:25 a.m. ET. Confirmation Of One Identity From The Sunday Times.

John Witherow, editor of the The Sunday Times, just issued a statement saying that one of the journalists killed was Marie Colvin, an American, who worked for the newspaper. He says:

"I want to report with great shock the sad news of the death of Marie Colvin in Syria today. We have reliable reports that Marie was killed in Homs while covering the devastating bombardment by the Syrian army. She was with Paul Conroy, the freelance photographer, who was injured in the attack. We do not know the extent of his wounds but the early reports suggest he is not too seriously hurt. We are doing what we can to get him to safety and to recover Marie's body.

"Marie was an extraordinary figure in the life of The Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered. She believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice. Above all, as we saw in her powerful report last weekend, her thoughts were with the victims of violence.

"Throughout her long career she took risks to fulfil this goal, including being badly injured in Sri Lanka. Nothing seemed to deter her. But she was much more than a war reporter. She was a woman with a tremendous joie de vivre, full of humour and mischief and surrounded by a large circle of friends, all of whom feared the consequences of her bravery.

"Marie was recruited to The Sunday Times more than a quarter of a century ago by David Blundy, her predecessor as Middle East correspondent, who was himself killed in El Salvador in 1989. It shows the risks that foreign correspondents are prepared to take in the pursuit of the truth. Marie will be missed sorely by all of us and her many friends."

Reuters adds that:

"Violence continued to spread. Several YouTube videos taken by local activists in Idlib, which could not be independently confirmed, showed bodies of young men with bullet wounds and hands tied lying dead in streets. The men, all civilians, were mostly shot in the head or chest on Tuesday in their homes or in streets in the villages of Idita, Iblin and Balshon in Idlib province near the border with Turkey, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said."

All this comes, the AP says, as "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to ramp up diplomatic efforts against President Bashar Assad's regime on a trip to North Africa this week, [and] some countries begin to explore the possibility of arming Syria's rebels."

Tuesday, as we reported, Syrian citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed was killed during shelling in Homs.

Note: Al-Jazeera, Reuters and some other news outlets earlier reported the names of the journalists who are said to have been killed before we included that information in this post. Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, posted a statement on Twitter saying he is "saddened by [the] terrible news" of Colvin's death. And British Prime Minister David Cameron paid a tribute to her during "question time" in parliament, the BBC says. We held off on reporting their names until there were multiple statements from several sources (The Sunday Times and the French government, most notably).

'We live in fear of a massacre'

Marie Colvin was the only British journalist reporting from inside the besieged Syrian enclave of Baba Amr. This is her final report.

They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.

Among the 300 huddling in this wood factory cellar in the besieged district of Baba Amr is 20-year-old Noor, who lost her husband and her home to the shells and rockets.

“Our house was hit by a rocket so 17 of us were staying in one room,” she recalls as Mimi, her three-year-old daughter, and Mohamed, her five-year-old son, cling to her abaya.

“We had had nothing but sugar and water for two days and my husband went to try to find food.” It was the last time she saw Maziad, 30, who had worked in a mobile phone repair shop. “He was torn to pieces by a mortar shell.”

For Noor, it was a double tragedy. Adnan, her 27-year-old brother, was killed at Maziad’s side.

Everyone in the cellar has a similar story of hardship or death. The refuge was chosen because it is one of the few basements in Baba Amr. Foam mattresses are piled against the walls and the children have not seen the light of day since the siege began on February 4. Most families fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs.

The city is running perilously short of supplies and the only food here is rice, tea and some tins of tuna delivered by a local sheikh who looted them from a bombed-out supermarket.

A baby born in the basement last week looked as shellshocked as her mother, Fatima, 19, who fled there when her family’s single-storey house was obliterated. “We survived by a miracle,” she whispers. Fatima is so traumatised that she cannot breastfeed, so the baby has been fed only sugar and water; there is no formula milk.

Fatima may or may not be a widow. Her husband, a shepherd, was in the countryside when the siege started with a ferocious barrage and she has heard no word of him since.
Read the rest of the article.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/news/article874796.ece