Wounded Journalists Smuggled Out of Syria

On Tuesday, a group of 35 Syrian volunteers — 13 of whom eventually lost their lives — took part in a rescue operation to smuggle two foreign journalists, British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier, out of the besieged city of Homs. Conroy was taken to Lebanon, Bouvier to an unknown location. –KA

AP via USA Today:

The two were injured last week in a government rocket attack on the rebel-controlled neighborhood of Baba Amr in central Homs. Two other Western journalists — American Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the same attack. Their bodies and two other uninjured foreign reporters — Frenchman William Daniels and Spaniard Javier Espinosa — may still be in Homs.

Their harrowing ordeal shined a light on the horrors of life under siege in Homs, a stronghold for government opponents waging an uprising against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian rule. Hundreds have been killed in more than three weeks of relentless shelling of the city, many of them dying when they ventured out to forage for food as a humanitarian crisis grew more dire by the day.

A top U.N. official released a new death toll for the 11-month-old uprising, saying well over 7,500 people have been killed and the conflict looked increasingly like civil war. Activist groups said Monday that the death toll had surpassed 8,000.

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