Marie Colvin Live Blog

American war correspondent Marie Colvin was killed while trying to retrieve her shoes so she could flee an army bombardment in the Syrian city of Homs, her employer The Sunday Times says. 

Colvin and a group of other journalists had all followed the local custom of removing their footwear before entering a building in the besieged city which was being used as a rebel press centre, it said. 

The journalists were on the ground floor of the building when the upper floors were hit by rockets, the paper said in the first full account of how the attack happened.

Although they were initially unhurt, Colvin ran to the hall to get her shoes back from where she had left them.

As she reached it, a rocket landed at the front of the building, burying her and French photographer Remi Ochlik in debris and killing them both, the paper says.

Colvin's mother Rosemarie told CNN on Saturday that her daughter would likely be buried in Syria, saying it had been too risky for aid workers attempting to retrieve her remains.

"We were told yesterday that today was probably the last day" for recovering the body, she told the network. 

British photographer Paul Conroy, who was working with Colvin at the time, and French reporter Edith Bouvier were wounded in the attack. Conroy's wife on Sunday urged Britain's Foreign Office to reconsider its decision not to send anyone to rescue her husband after it deemed the mission  too dangerous.

"I would like it if somebody in that embassy was to say 'forget the protocol, I'm going and I'm going to get them out' - but I know that is not going to happen," Kate Conroy told BBC Radio 4. "I have had quite a heated conversation with an MP and he has been absolutely categoric with me that that's not going to happen."

Britain summoned Syria's ambassador to London on Wednesday to demand that Syrian authorities facilitate "immediate arrangements for the repatriation of the journalists' bodies," as well as medical treatment for Conroy.

[AFP]

France holds Syria responsible for the safety of its citizens there, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Wednesday, after a French photographer was killed in a Syrian army bombardment of an opposition stronghold.

Juppe said that a Syrian army ceasefire in order to give rapid access to humanitarian aid was "imperative", adding that the response by the Syrian government to the wounding of a second French journalist who was reportedly in danger of dying from her wounds was insufficient.

"This situation is horrific," Juppe told reporters. "France holds the Syrian authorities responsible and accountable for the
lives of our citizens, for the lives of our injured."

US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik died when 11 rockets hit a building where they were staying, and freelance French journalist Edith Bouvier was in a critical condition in a poorly equipped field hospital.