American journalist Marie Colvin and award-winning French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed Wednesday in the besieged Syrian city of Homs, opposition activists and a French official said.
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Colvin, from Oyster Bay, New York, was veteran foreign correspondent for the U.K.'s Sunday Times newspaper. Ochlik won a World Press Photo award earlier this month for his work covering the uprising in Libya.
A witness contacted by Reuters from Amman said shells hit the house in the Baba Amr district of Homs in which they were staying and a rocket hit them when they tried to escape.
Video broadcast from Homs showed bodies among the rubble, one with its legs severed by shrapnel.
Video: US and French journalists killed in Syria (on this page)Activists in Homs told Reuters that at least two other foreign journalists were wounded. One was identified as British photographer Paul Conroy. An American female journalist was also in very serious condition, the activists said.
"Up to this point we have two dead. They are still under the rubble because the shelling hasn't stopped," an activist in Homs named Omar told Reuters. "No one can get close to the house."
"There is another American female journalist who is in a really serious condition, she really needs urgent care," Omar added. The house was hit by more than 10 rockets, he said.
President Bashar Assad's crackdown on protests against his rule killed 5,400 people in 2011 alone, according to the United Nations. Hundreds more have been killed since, activist groups say. One activist group has put the current death toll at more than 7,300.
Colvin: 'Snipers all around'
In a news report aired by U.K. broadcaster ITN on Tuesday, Colvin talked about the situation in Homs and its Baba Amr suburb.
"The Syrians are not allowing civilians to leave. Anyone who gets on the street, if they are not hit by a shell, they are sniped," she said in the report.
"There are snipers all around Baba Amr on the high buildings," Colvin said. "I think the sickening thing is the complete merciless nature ... they are hitting civilian buildings absolutely mercilessly, without caring. The scale of it is just shocking."
Speaking to BBC News Tuesday, Colvin compared the situation in Baba Amr to the massacre of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war in 1995, when Serb forces killed more than 7,000 Muslims.
She said there were 28,000 living in Baba Amr and "they are here because they can't get out."
Colvin told the BBC that she had counted 14 shells falling on the suburb within 30 seconds early Tuesday morning.
She spoke about watching a 2-year-old child dying from shrapnel wounds in a makeshift clinic in an apartment, saying it was "absolutely horrific."
"The doctor just said 'I cannot do anything.' His little tummy just kept heaving until he died," Colvin told the BBC. The child was among a "constant stream" of injured civilians coming to the apartment for treatment.
'One of the greats'
Reuters reported the names of Ochlik and Colvin, citing opposition activists and witnesses. NBC News' Richard Engel also said on his Twitter account "Syrian opposition contact in homs tells nbc news marie colvin and remi ochlik killed, third reporter seriously injured."
Earlier, as the news was emerging, he tweeted "Marie Colvin is one of the greats. Been everywhere. Would be a tragic loss."
Colvin had been a foreign correspondent for Britain's Sunday Times for two decades, reporting from the world's most dangerous places.
Colvin, who was aged in her 50s, lost the sight in one eye after being hit by shrapnel while reporting from Sri Lanka in 2001. In public appearances after that attack, she wore a black eye patch.
Ochlik's website says he had covered the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, presidential elections in Haiti in 2010, and the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt last year in addition to the revolt that ousted Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.
A French government spokesman later confirmed their deaths. News International, which owns The Sunday Times, told NBC News that it had no comment.
The New York Times reported that Colvin and Ochlik's deaths follow the killings of several citizen journalists in Syria. One, Rami el Sayed, a well-known videoblogger in Baba Amr, died Tuesday.
NYT: Pulitzer-winning journalist Shadid dies in Syria
The paper said some activists fear the Assad regime is deliberately targeting journalists to stop news of what is happening in Syria from being reported.
"It's too much of a coincidence ... There are reports of planes flying around and they may be looking for the satellite uplinks," The New York Times quoted a Syrian activist in Cairo as saying.
Shells had reportedly rained down on rebellious districts of Homs at a rate of 10 per minute at one point on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. Homs is Syria's third-largest city.
The Red Cross has called for a daily two-hour cease-fire so that it can deliver emergency aid to the wounded and sick.
Activists: Scores killed as Syria targets civilians
Earlier, an opposition activists' group said Syrian troops and militiamen loyal to Assad chased, captured and then shot dead 27 young men in three northern villages.
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.
Several YouTube videos taken by local activists in Idlib, which could not be independently confirmed, showed bodies of young men with bullet wounds lying in streets and in houses.
Video: Syrian forces bombard Homs (on this page)Meanwhile, the Obama administration has opened the door slightly to international military assistance for Syria's armed opposition.
In coordinated messages, the White House and State Department said Tuesday they still hoped for a political solution.
But, faced with the daily onslaught by the Assad regime against Syrian civilians, officials dropped the administration's previous strident opposition to arming anti-regime forces. However, it remained unclear what, if any, role the U.S. might play in providing such aid.
"We don't want to take actions that would contribute to the further militarization of Syria because that could take the country down a dangerous path," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday.
"But we don't rule out additional measures if the international community should wait too long and not take the kind of action that needs to be taken," he added.
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The administration had previously said flatly that more weapons were not the answer to the Syrian situation.
There had been no mention of "additional measures," despite daily reports from Syrian activists of dozens of deaths from government attacks.
At the State Department, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland used nearly identical language to describe the administration's evolving position.
"From our perspective, we don't believe that it makes sense to contribute now to the further militarization of Syria," she told reporters.
"What we don't want to see is the spiral of violence increase. That said, if we can't get Assad to yield to the pressure that we are all bringing to bear, we may have to consider additional measures," she added.
The Associated Press, Reuters, NBC News and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46477679/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/
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