Syrian Freedom

*MUST READ & MUST SHARE* Paul Conroy (@reflextv) exposes Russian complicity #Syria

by Paul Conroy (click link source for Facebook page)

The Butcher of Homs

Last Tuesday I was asked to join a panel discussion at the House of Commons. I readily agreed as it was to screen Jonathan Miller’s fantastic and ground breaking film ‘Syria’s Torture Machine. One of the most insightful and inspiring pieces of filmmaking I have seen in many years.
The event was hosted by Anne Clywd MP with representatives from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, a Syrian torture victim, a representative from the Russian federation and me.
After an introductory round of speeches we watched Jonathan’s superb film and the panel then opened for answers. By this time I had moved back to the audience as my leg injuries were not ideal for sitting up front. Still wishing to take part in the panel discussion and perhaps do a little Q&A I asked if I could have a microphone. My colleague asked one of those media study, large red glasses and tight jeans assistant producer types if this was possible “It’s not going to happen” he was told in a rather bolshie and self-important way. “I think you will find he’s doing it anyway” my colleague Miles Amoore from the Sunday Time grinned.
The point in this is that all week I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get a comment from the Russians regarding arms supplies to Syria. Now, right there in front of me, was a real life, in the flesh card carrying representative of the Russian federation and a Channel 4 work placement fruit bat wouldn’t give me a microphone.
I was reduced to putting up my hand and rather grumpily waiting my turn. In the event the wonderful Ann Clywd chairing the proceedings saw my rather desperate outstretched hand, similar to that of a child at school who finds he miraculously knows the answer to a question and is desperate not to go unnoticed.
Given that I had had a large piece of Russian shrapnel removed from me a few days previously I was eager to ask about the Russians continued supply of arms to Syria. I started by reminding him that it was a piece of a Russian made shell that had just been removed from my back. He looked suitably embarrassed but said nothing.
My main question I said was a three part yes or no question which he agreed to have a pop at
Q Is it true that Russia is supplying arms and heavy artillery munitions to Syria
A. Yes
Q. Are you are aware that these weapons and munitions are being used against civilians
A. Yes
Q. Knowing this will Russia stop selling weapons and heavy munitions to Syria
A. No (brief gasp from me and others) if we don’t do it somebody else will.
Now excuse me but that seems like an answer that a crack dealer would resort to when caught outside of a primary school with a huge bag of class A drugs he has been peddling to pre-teens, not the answer of a representative of one of the most powerful (and dangerous) nations on the planet.

So there we have it, direct from the horse’s mouth. Vladimir Putin ‘The Butcher of Homs’ as he so fondly known on the streets of Babr Amr is indeed supplying the Assad regime weapons, munitions and who know what else on the solid conviction that ‘If they don’t sell it someone else will’.

It’s little wonder we live on such a peaceful and harmonious planet.

Journalists targeted by #Syria: French reporters

Two journalists from the French Figaro paper say the Al-Assad regime troops are targeting the media centre in the besieged Baba Amro district

French journalist Edith Bouvier is carried on a stretcher after her arrival on a government plane at Villacoublay military airport near Paris.(Photo: Reuters)

AFP, Saturday 3 Mar 2012

Syrian forces seemed to be directly targeting journalists in Homs, wounded French reporter Edith Bouvier and photographer William Daniels said Saturday, after escaping the besieged city.

“There were at least five successive explosions, very near. We really had the impression that we were directly targeted,” the Figaro daily quoted the pair as saying after their return to Paris Friday.

The rocket attack on 22 February in the flashpoint Baba Amr area of Homs killed French photographer Remi Ochlik as well as veteran Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, and wounded Bouvier and British photographer Paul Conroy.

Paris prosecutors on Friday opened a murder probe into the attack. The bodies of Ochlik and Colvin were meanwhile formally identified in Damascus by the French and Polish ambassadors.

Le Figaro reporter Bouvier sustained multiple fractures to her leg from the rocket attack on a makeshift media centre in Baba Amr.

Bouvier, 31 and Daniels, 34, were smuggled out of Syria to Beirut by activists and were greeted by relatives and French President Nicolas Sarkozy when they arrived Friday at a French airbase near Paris.

The two Figaro journalists recounted their harrowing experience from the time on 22 February when Syrian rockets began hitting the “press centre”.

“The Syrian activists who were with us, were used to these bombardments and understood the danger immediately. They told us that we must leave right away,” the paper quoted the Bouvier and Daniels as saying.

Colvin and Ochlik were the first to leave. A missile landed in front of the press centre.

“The explosion was massive, Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were practically at the point of impact. They were killed on the spot,” the Figaro reported.

The injured Bouvier couldn’t move her leg. “I screamed” and Syrian insurgent fighters took the journalists to a field hospital in a nearby house.

The International Committee of the Red Cross made some attempt at evacuating those remaining, but were unable to get the Western journalists out as the Syrian regime forces carried out the assault that eventually led to the rebels’ withdrawal.

The two French journalists were trapped for days, even after members of the rebel Free Syrian Army managed to get the wounded Conroy and Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa out of the country and into Lebanon.

“We didn’t know anything… was the way blocked? Were the Syrian troops coming? I really wanted to flee, before remembering that I was immobilised,” said Bouvier who was eventually moved out on a stretcher.

Their exact route out remains a secret, though the two French journalists recounted how they were sheltered by locals along the way “despite the risks”.

Their rescuers also braved rain and snow along the mountain roads, changing vehicles several times.

“They really put themselves in danger for us, they did everything for us,” said Bouvier.

They eventually reached Lebanon late Thursday — the day Baba Amr was retaken by government forces — and were repatriated to France the following day.

Sarkozy, who announced Friday that Paris would close its embassy in Damascus to denounce President Bashar al-Assad’s “scandalous” repression, paid homage to the journalists on their arrival.

He praised a “chivalrous” Daniels for staying with Bouvier in the Homs suburb of Baba Amr during days of heavy regime bombardment.

Upon his arrival in Paris, Daniels hailed the people of Homs, saying: “All of Baba Amr supported us. They treated us like kings. We were in one of the most protected houses. These people are heroes who are being massacred.”

His eyes welling up with tears, Daniels added: “Those who saved our lives are surely dead, although I don’t know. … It was nine days of non-stop nightmare with our hopes crashing over a silly detail just about every day.”

An ambulance parked on the tarmac took Bouvier under police escort to a military hospital for treatment for the broken leg she suffered during the deadly bombardment.

I would say ‘somebody please forget the geo-politics, forget the meetings, forget all of that, do something’, because as I’m talking to you now they’re dying. #Syria

“

—	Paul Conroy when asked what he thought the people of Homs and #Syria would want him to say on their behalf -The Telegraph

#Syria: Rescued journalist Paul Conroy describes the situation in the Syrian city of Homs as ‘systematic slaughter’.

Paul Conroy, the British journalist injured in an attack on the Syrian city of Homs says the situation is not a war, but a “systematic massacre”.

8:37PM GMT 02 Mar 2012

Mr Conroy, who was speaking from his hospital bed in London, told Channel 4 news that those who got him out of Syria were heroes.

He said: “Those people laid their lives down for us and I must honour that level of commitment by doing and saying what I can. I salute them.”

He also described how he feared for what would happen in Syria with no cameras or journalists there to report.

“It’s an attempt to massacre. It’s horrifying to think that this is the part we’re seeing.

“Once the cameras are gone, as they are now, God knows what’s happening. Any talking now is too late.”

Mr Conroy said that despite reports that many people have fled Homs, there are still thousands of people there, living in “bombed out wrecks” and “waiting to die”.

He said: “It’s more than a catastrophe. It’s snowing there now, people can’t light fires.

“It’s complete failure. In years to come, we’re going to sit and we’re going to go ‘how did we let this happen under our nose?”’

When asked what he thought the people of Homs and Syria would want him to say on their behalf, Mr Conroy added: “I would say ‘somebody please forget the geo-politics, forget the meetings, forget all of that, do something’, because as I’m talking to you now they’re dying.

“They would say please send help. They need help. This is beyond meetings.”

On leaving the body of Ms Colvin behind, Mr Conroy said: “Sadly it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.”

He said Ms Colvin “would have wanted the story (told) over anything”, adding: “Dear friends, the world has lost one of its greatest observers and it’ll be a worse place without her.”

Mr Conroy added that he hopes Ms Colvin’s death is honoured by doing something to help the people of Syria.

Paul Conroy, Photographer Wounded In #Syria, Feared Leaving Homs

Paul Conroy was injured on Wednesday during the attack which killed war correspondent Marie Colvin but refused to leave the city with the Syrian Red Crescent.

A wounded British photographer would not leave the Syrian besieged city of Homs with a humanitarian organisation for fear it was “not to be trusted”, his wife said.

Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy was injured on Wednesday during the attack which killed war correspondent Marie Colvin but refused to leave the city with the Syrian Red Crescent.

His wife Kate Conroy told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme her husband had been advised the organisation was “not to be trusted”.

“They refused to leave with them unless they had somebody from the British or French Embassy with them as an escort,” she said.

She spoke as the Government today said “all the necessary work is being done” to secure the return of Mr Conroy and to repatriate Colvin’s body.

She continued: “I can understand his rationale for it but having had various conversations with MPs, the Foreign Office and so on, I know they are not going to provide an Embassy official to go with them.

“Now he needs to realise that they have an international profile and that is sufficient protection in its own right to get them out safely.”

The Syrian Red Crescent is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to negotiate with the Syrian authorities about the retrieval of wounded and others trapped in the city.

On Friday, teams from the ICRC were deployed to Homs to evacuate seven wounded and 20 women and children.

They have since been trying to re-enter the embattled neighbourhood of Baba Amr which has been devastated by a month of shelling by government forces.

An ICRC spokesman said: “We are attempting to go in the affected area again today. Needs are very urgent and it is absolutely crucial that we are able to enter in order to evacuate people in need of help and to bring in vital assistance.”

Mrs Conroy, from Totnes, Devon, said she could “reluctantly appreciate” the position adopted by the Foreign Office.

She added: “They can’t sanction that but, for me, my husband has put his life at risk and the others have.

“I would like it if somebody in that embassy was to say ‘forget the protocol, I’m going in and I’m going to help to get them out’.
“But I know that is not going to happen.

“I have asked and I’ve had quite a heated conversation with an MP and he’s been absolute categoric with me that it’s not going to happen.”

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show: “We are doing everything we possibly can.

“The Foreign Office have been seeking to negotiate with the Syrian authorities. Our ambassador in Damascus is engaged in trying to do just that.

“It is extremely difficult and the conversations are patchy.”

It is understood that Foreign Office officials are working alongside the French embassy to try to retrieve the journalists. They are said to be pressing the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and working with humanitarian organisations.

Mr Mitchell also called on the Syrian regime of President Bashar al Assad to allow international aid agencies into the city and Baba Amr.

“We are demanding unfettered access for the humanitarian agencies who are there on the ground. We continue to push in every way we possibly can for this unfettered access,” he said.

He indicated Britain would oppose any moves by countries in the region to supply arms to the Syrian rebels, as they demanded at Friday’s meeting in Tunis of the international Friends of Syria group.

“We need to stop the fighting, not boost it in any way at all,” he said.

He warned, however, that the regime would be held to account for its actions.

“This is an evil regime that has turned its guns on its own people. It is despicable what’s happening and we will hold them to account in every way that we can for the human rights abuses that are going on,” said Mr Mitchell.

Mr Mitchell said there was evidence of people on the ground “infiltrating the Syrian Red Crescent” and “posing an additional danger” to anyone seeking to leave the city.

Shoot the journalists: #Syria’s lesson from the Arab spring

Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer who died alongside Marie Colvin in Homs. Photograph: Lucas Dolega/AP

Peter Beaumont

The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2012

The media centre in the Homs suburb of Baba Amr is nothing more than a family house. Once it had four storeys and a satellite dish on the roof. Reporters, photographers and cameramen had been forced to move there after their previous bolthole came under attack.

Two weeks ago, the top of the house was reduced to rubble during a visit by a CNN television crew, who had placed their own dishes there to broadcast live footage. The assault continued until the dishes were knocked down.

If other evidence were needed that the building had been targeted, before the attack last week that led to the deaths of the Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and the French photographer Rémi Ochlik, it was supplied by another of the group that travelled to Homs with them, Jean-Pierre Perrin, who described how the building’s own dish had been peppered with sniper rounds.

Even after their deaths, the regime has continued to attack Colvin and Ochlik. Footage was shown on state television on Saturday of their bodies, accusing them of being “spies.”

The regime of Bashar al-Assad has learned the lessons of the Arab spring when it comes to dealing with the media – both citizen journalists and international outlets. As the Committee to Protect Journalists noted in a 2011 report, the regime quickly “enforced an effective media blackout” as soon as the protests began last March.

It banned, arrested and expelled international journalists and detained local reporters who tried to cover the protests.

It disabled mobile phones, landlines, electricity, and the internet in cities where the protests broke out, and used violence to extract the passwords of social media sites from journalists, allowing the Syrian electronic army, a pro-government online group, to hack the sites and post pro-regime comments. “In April,” the report continues, “al-Jazeera suspended its Damascus bureau after several of its journalists were harassed and received threats.

Three days after the brutal assault of the famed cartoonist Ali Ferzat in August, the government passed a new media law that ‘banned’ the imprisonment of journalists and allowed greater freedom of expression. It followed this by jailing several journalists. In November, cameraman Ferzat Jarban was the first journalist to be killed in Syria in connection with his work since the committee began keeping detailed records in 1992.

If Jarban was the first, he has not been the last. Gilles Jacquier, a French cameraman, was killed in Homs in January, while on a government sponsored press trip, a killing first blamed on opposition fighters but later blamed on the regime by two Swiss colleagues who accused the soldiers accompanying them of leading them into an “elaborate trap”.

The regime went further. Those who had entered the country before, such as Anthony Shadid of the New York Times – who collapsed and died in Syria a few days before Colvin’s death – were denounced on Syrian state television as “spies”, while those visiting Homs illegally were warned that they would be killed by the regime.

Last week, all the evidence now suggests that the regime delivered on its promise, targeting not just the latest group of foreign reporters to visit Homs but also Rami al-Sayyed, a citizen journalist whose video link to Baba Amr had kept news of events in the city in the forefront of the world’s attention.

The war in Syria has become not simply a conflict between a brutal regime and those who want to see it fall, but a war on information itself: a calculated desire to destroy the fractured opposition’s centres and erase all knowledge of what happened.

On Friday the difficulties of reporting from Homs were reinforced in a series of tweets by Javier Espinosa of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, who survived uninjured in the attack that killed and injured four colleagues, including Colvin, last week. He described drones flying overhead guiding the bombing of the suburb, saying: “I would love to interview who is launching the mortars right now. What he thinks when he is sending tons of shrapnel to kill people.”

Asked to describe the drone, Espinosa said it was too dangerous to “get my head from where I am hiding”.

Assad’s war on the media, like that on his people, is unlikely to be successful in the long run. Journalists may have been pushed out of Syria, but it seems certain they will return yet more determined to tell the world what is happening.

As for the regime, Assad’s ferocious tactics may be making short-term gains but in the long term the outcome is most likely to be the fall of his regime, the Chatham House thinktank said in the Political Outlook for Syria, a report last week. The question now is not if but when. And also in what circumstances.

As the “Friends of Syria” meeting ended in disarray in Tunis on Friday, it was not with suggestions about how to bring the violence to an end but amid threats from two key regional actors – Saudi Arabia and Qatar – who said that they supported military escalation against Assad. In doing so they have raised the terrifying spectre of a proxy war with Shia Iran, Assad’s remaining regional ally, now that even Hamas has formally backed the uprising.

The remarks of the two countries – including a Saudi statement, before its delegation walked out of the conference, that arming the opposition was an “excellent idea” – came only hours after the disclosure by rebel sources that they were already receiving foreign arms and equipment.

The Saudi threat to arm the opposition has come amid increasing rhetoric from the US – including the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s description of Russia’s blocking tactics as “despicable”. In a subtle shift in policy, US officials, quoted by the Washington Post, said that “steps toward arming the opposition were likely to become a reality the [US] would not oppose if the Syrian leader does not yield.”

The Saudi intervention on Friday should not, perhaps, have been surprising. The day before, in a telephone call, King Abdullah told the Russian president Dmitri Medvedev in the bluntest terms that discussion on the issue was “useless”, and criticised Russia for not co-ordinating with Arab states before vetoing a UN security council resolution. All of which appears to confirm the view of some regional analysts that Saudi Arabia decided some time ago that intervention was inevitable.

Another challenge facing the regime is not direct intervention by neighbours but an ever-growing isolation. The regime has been told that it is no longer welcome at the next Arab league summit in Baghdad. The move by Hamas, which for long kept its political bureau in Damascus, meant that there was now no Sunni group or government allied with the regime.

Russia too – despite its objection to intervention and its veto – in recent days has shown increasing frustration, calling for a ceasefire, although it has continued to supply weapons.

Few even among the closest observers of Syria have any certainty, however, of the endgame. The Chatham House report lists a menu of potential scenarios, from the survival of a deeply “embattled and unpopular” regime for several years, to a coup of Alawite officers against the Assad family, to various kinds of collapse that include a Yemen-style implosion.

And if the authors are cautious about predicting an outcome, they are deeply sceptical too about the opposition Syrian National Council. Britain and other governments recognised the council in Tunis on Friday as a “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people.

But the authors describe the group as “not necessarily representative of Syrians” and report concern that “it has focused excessively on wooing international support rather than building domestic strength”. Overall, the message is clear, reinforced by the fallout from Tunis: the outcome in Syria is unpredictable and likely to be extremely messy.

None of this will bring comfort to civilians trapped in Syria by the fighting, or the two injured journalists, Paul Conroy of the Sunday Times and Frenchwoman Edith Bouvier, as they await evacuation from Homs.

While the Red Cross evacuated a small number of wounded women and children from the city on Friday, and was in negotiations on Saturday to bring out more, the attacks continued as the military took its bombardment of rebel-held Baba Amr into a fourth week.

Nadir al-Husseini, an opposition activist in the city, described desperate conditions in Baba Amr. “It would be good if they [the Red Cross] could bring in some aid. But even if they brought us some medical supplies how much would it really help?” he told the Reuters news agency. “We have hundreds of wounded people crammed into houses all around the neighbourhood. People are dying from lack of blood because we just don’t have the capability of treating everyone. I don’t think any amount they could bring in would really help.”

The description of conditions in Baba Amr, which has been hit by Russian-made 240mm mortars – the world’s largest – came as others in the city condemned the Tunis meeting.

“They [world leaders] are still giving opportunities to this man who is killing us and has already killed thousands of people,” said Husseini. “I’ve completely lost faith in everyone but God. But in spite of that, I know we will continue this uprising. We’ll die trying before we give up,” he said. “The shelling is just like it was yesterday. We have had 22 days of this. The women and children are all hiding in basements.”

“No one would dare try to flee the neighbourhood, that is instant death. You’d have to get past snipers and soldiers. Then there is a trench that surrounds our neighbourhood and a few others. Then you have to go past more troops.”

For now the suffering of Homs continues without an end in sight.

Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik died in Homs last week, bringing the death toll of journalists in Syria this year alone to six.

In 2011 at least 66 journalists were killed around the world as a result of their work, a 16% rise on the previous year, with 17 deaths among reporters covering the Arab spring uprisings. Ten deaths in Pakistan marked the heaviest loss in a single country. Libya claimed five lives, including award-winning British photojournalist Tim Hetherington, and al-Jazeera cameraman Ali Hassan al-Jaber.

Putin’s Russia is an increasingly dangerous place for journalists with extreme limits on freedom of expression. Forty-nine have died since 1992, including Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in 2006.

The most deadly country for journalists in the past 10 years has been Iraq, where 151 have been killed since 1992. Coming a bloody second is the Philippines, where 72 have been murdered. Covering human rights as a journalist is more deadly than covering crime, war or corruption.

Street protests in other countries such as Greece, Belarus, Uganda, Chile and the US were responsible for a surge in arrests, from 535 in 2010 to 1,044 in 2011, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Ethiopia was criticised last year for jailing two Swedish journalists covering the insurgency on its border with Somalia. The country is causing increasing international concern with its harsh policies towards its own press.

Nine online journalists were killed for their work in 2011, including Mexican reporter MarÍa Elizabeth MacÍas Castro, whose decapitated body was found near Nuevo Laredo, with a note stating she had been murdered for reporting on social media websites. Mexico has at least 11 journalists reported missing, feared dead.

Source : Committee to Protect Journalists

#Syria: Homs via Al Jazeera English

Two injured Western journalists trapped in a besieged neighbourhood of Homs have refused to be evacuated without escort and until it is assured that a humanitarian corridor will allow residents to leave, a source close to one of the journalists has told Al Jazeera.

A friend who has been in direct contact with Edith Bouvier, a freelance journalist on assignment for Le Figaro, said the two had refused to leave until a diplomatic or Red Cross official arrived to escort them and it was guaranteed that any Syrians who wished to leave would be allowed to evacuate.

Bouvier was reportedly injured seriously in the leg when a makeshift media centre in the Bab Amr neighbourhood was struck by shelling on Wednesday, but her friend said the injury was not yet life threatening. Paul Conroy, a photographer for the Sunday Times, was also hurt in the attack, which killed US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

Bouvier told her friend that the journalists have been there for three days, while many Syrians have endured injuries for more than a month without outside medical assistance.

Activist Omar Shakir’s last call to Baba Amr media office before attack #Syria

via rosealhomsi

Omar Shakers last call with Baba Amr media office, it is long but at 4:50 you can hear one of the foreign journalists saying “I can’t move” you can hear the missiles that continue to fall, and at 12 minutes onwards he is informed the 2 journalists Marie and Remi are dead.

The regime knew the journalists were there, 3 more were injured. The regime used multiple missile launchers on the media centre killing 7 Syrians too in the blast and there is little medical aid for the injured journalists or Syrians. It was targeted so the media centre is now known. The type of weapons used were those being used for 19 days straight and journalists have come and left and witnessed the barbaric attack on the neighbourhood.

The regime has not stopped using missiles and actually used toxic gases this evening as it stepped up its attack on Baba Amr totally unbothered the foreign journalists will report the crimes to the outside world.

Marie yesterday spoke to many outlets and said how she saw a baby die, how the Syrian government lies, how the babies chest went up and down until he died as there was no way out or medical aid. She said she didn’t expect to survive as the situation was the worst, and she said this is the worst she had seen, though she has covered many wars.

What can I say except…The worlds heroes can be found in Baba Amr…

And the journalists who risk their lives to go into the war zone Syria and bring our stories out, are heroes too.

Sarkozy brands deaths of reporters in #Syria ‘murder’

PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared on Thursday that the deaths of a French photographer and a US reporter in the besieged Syrian city of Homs amounted to “murder”.

American journalist Marie Colvin of Britain’s The Sunday Times and freelance French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed Wednesday during what witnesses said was a bombardment of a rebel enclave by Syrian forces.

#Syria: French journalist Edith Bouvier pleads for evacuation from Homs

France calls for humanitarian corridor to Homs after video plea from journalist injured in shelling that killed Marie Colvin

Edith Bouvier with a group of journalists trapped in the besieged city of Homs.

Edith Bouvier, the French journalist badly injured in the explosion that killed the Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin, has issued a moving video plea for help in getting from the besieged city of Homs across the border to Lebanon.

Bouvier, a journalist with le Figaro, requested a ceasefire saying she needed urgent evacuation by ambulance because of the risk of suffering further blood loss from wounds sustained in the explosion that killed Colvin and a colleague.

Her appeal came as efforts to repatriate the bodies of the two dead journalists and their injured colleagues, including the photographer Paul Conroy, appeared to have stalled amid continued shelling.

Pictured lying in bed under a blanket, Bouvier gives her name and the date 23 February explaining that she was with “the group of journalists wounded in the attack in which Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik” were killed.

“I have a broken leg. The femur is broken along its length and laterally too. I need to undergo surgery as soon as possible. The doctors here have treated us as well as they could but they can’t perform surgery. So I need a ceasefire and an ambulance or car in good enough shape to get us out,” she says.

In a separate video, Conroy said he was being treated for three major leg wounds by opposition medics.

“I am currently being looked after by the Free Syrian Army medical staff who are treating me with the best medical treatment available. It’s important to add that I am here as a guest and not captured.

“Obviously any assistance that can be given by government agencies would be welcome,” says Conroy.

The appeal for help comes amid growing international pressure for a ceasefire and the opening of humanitarian corridors into the areas most badly affected by the conflict in Syria, including Baba Amr, the district of Homs in which Bouvier was injured, which has been under constant bombardment for 20 days, leading to hundreds of casualties.

A local doctor appearing in Bouvier’s video describes the problems she and other injured civilians trapped in the area face. “Edith needs medical care we don’t have. [And] mostly we are afraid of clotting which may cause her body to shock. She should be out of here immediately to have suitable medical care.”

Bouvier’s exhausted-looking photographer colleague William Daniels then explains he was “lucky” not to sustain any injuries in the explosion.

According to activists with the global advocacy network Avaaz, who spoke to the Guardian and other news outlets, 31-year-old Bouvier was being treated at a poorly equipped field hospital.

“There is a high risk she will bleed to death without urgent medical attention,” said a member of Avaaz. “We are desperately trying to get her out, doing all we can in extremely perilous circumstances.”

Activists said there were many other wounded Syrians in similarly dire conditions. The video of the journalists shows one unidentified woman sitting near Bouvier covered in blood.

“There are many civilians in a similar state. This is just a basic field hospital and we just don’t have the tools to treat them,” said one activist, Mahmoud, who said he helped bring the journalists to the makeshift clinic.

France has demanded that Syria offer it immediate access to the wounded journalists.

“I ask the Syrian government to stop immediately the attacks and respect its humanitarian obligations,” the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said in a statement.

“[We] have asked our embassy in Damascus to demand from Syrian authorities a securitised passage with medical help to be given to victims with the support of the International Red Cross.”

#Syria’n gunners pound stronghold where Marie Colvin released last dispatch

Syrian gunners have pounded the opposition stronghold where veteran American-born war correspondent Marie Colvin chronicled her last dispatch, just hours before an intense morning barrage killed her and a French photojournalist.

Their deaths were two of 74 reported Wednesday in Syria.

“I watched a little baby die today,” Marie Colvin told the BBC from the embattled city of Homs on Tuesday in one of her final reports.

“Absolutely horrific, a two-year old child had been hit,” added Ms Colvin, who worked for Britain’s Sunday Times. “They stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said, ‘I can’t do anything.’ His little tummy just kept heaving until he died.”

Colvin and photographer Remi Ochlik were among a group of journalists who had crossed into Syria and were sharing accommodations with activists, raising speculation that government forces targeted the makeshift media center, although opposition groups had previously described the shelling as indiscriminate. At least two other Western journalists were wounded.

Hundreds of people have died in weeks of siege-style attacks on Homs that have come to symbolize the desperation and defiance of the nearly year-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.

The Syrian military appears to be stepping up assaults to block the opposition from gaining further ground and political credibility with the West and Arab allies. On Wednesday, helicopter gunships reportedly strafed mountain villages that shelter the rebel Free Syrian Army, and soldiers staged door-to-door raids in Damascus, among other attacks.

The bloodshed and crackdowns brought some of the most galvanizing calls for the end of Assad’s rule.

“That’s enough now. The regime must go,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy after his government confirmed the deaths of Colvin, 56, and Ochlik, 28.

The US and other countries have begun to cautiously examine possible military aid to the rebels. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton heads to Tunisia for a meeting Friday of more than 70 nations to look at ways to assist Assad’s opponents, which now include hundreds of defected military officers and soldiers.

“This tragic incident is another example of the shameless brutality of the Assad regime,” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said of the killing of the journalists.

In Saudi Arabia, the state news agency described King Abdullah scolding Russian President Dmitry Medvedev - one of Assad’s few remaining allies - for joining China in vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution this month condemning the violence.

But even Moscow said the ongoing bloodshed adds urgency for a cease-fire to allow talks between his regime and opponents.

Washington had strongly opposed arming anti-Assad forces, fearing it could bring Syria into a full-scale civil war. Yet the mounting civilian death tolls - activists reported at least 74 across Syria on Wednesday - has brought small but potentially significant shifts in US strategies. It remains unclear, however, what kind of direct assistance the US would be willing to provide.

The toppling of Assad also could mark a major blow to Iran, which depends on Damascus as its main Arab ally and a pathway to aid Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“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 said. “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.”

The UN estimates that 5,400 people have been killed in repression by the Assad regime against a popular uprising that began 11 months ago. That figure was given in January and has not been updated. Syrian activists put the death toll at more than 7,300. Overall figures cannot be independently confirmed because Syria keeps tight control on the media.

On Wednesday, the UN said that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would dispatch Valerie Amos, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, to Syria to assess the situation. No date was set.

Twenty of the deaths reported on Wednesday were in Homs, where resistance forces include breakaway soldiers. Homs has drawn comparisons to the Libyan city of Misrata, which withstood withering attacks last year by troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

“It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and burst of gunfire,” Colvin wrote in what would be her last story published Feb 19. “There are no telephones and the electricity has been cut off. Few homes have diesel for the tin stoves they rely on for heat in the coldest winter that anyone can remember.”

She described shrinking supplies of rice, tea and cans of tuna “delivered by a local sheik who looted them from a bombed-out supermarket.”

“On the lips of everyone was the question, ‘Why have we been abandoned by the world?’” she wrote.

Syrian activists said at least two other Western journalists - French reporter Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro and British photographer Paul Conroy of the Sunday Times - were wounded in Wednesday’s shelling.

Amateur video posted online shows the two injured journalists in a makeshift clinic. The French journalist, Bouvier had her left leg tied from the thigh down in a cast. A doctor in the video explains that she needs emergency medical care. Conroy appears in the video and the doctors say he has deep gashes in his left leg.

In one tragic image, a man with a bandaged head is shown mourning his son, who was purportedly killed by government shelling in Homs on Saturday. The video was released by activists Wednesday and the details could not be confirmed. Colvin described seeing a two-year-old child killed on Tuesday and it did not appear to be related to that video.

A Homs-based activist, Omar Shaker, said the journalists were killed when several rockets hit a garden of a house used by activists and journalists in the besieged neighborhood of Baba Amr. Shaker said tanks and artillery began intensely shelling at 6.30 am and was continuing hours later. He said the room used by journalists was hit around 10 am.

Amateur video posted online by activist showed what they claimed were bodies of the two journalists in the middle of a heavily damaged house. It said they were of the journalists. One of the dead was wearing what appeared to be a flak jacket.

The intense shelling in parts of Homs - with blasts occurring sometimes just a few seconds apart - appeared to have had no clear pattern over the past week, hitting homes and streets randomly. Some have suggested that the house used by the journalists and activists was pinpointed by Syrian gunners, perhaps by following the signals from satellite phones and other communication equipment.

The French culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, claimed the journalists were “pursued” as they tried to find cover but he did not elaborate. A campaigner for online global activist group Avaaz, Alice Jay, said the group was “directly targeted.”

Another Avaaz activist, Alex Renton, alleged that seven Syrians trying to reach Baba Amr with medical supplies and a respirator were found shot to death with their hands tied behind their back. Two other activists, including a foreign paramedic, traveling with the seven are missing, he added. The claims could not be immediately confirmed.

Many foreign journalists have been sneaking into Syria illegally in the past months with the help of smugglers from Lebanon and Turkey. Although the Syrian government has allowed some journalists into the country their movement is tightly controlled by Information Ministry minders.

Colvin, of East Norwich, NY, was a veteran foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times for the past two decades. She was instantly recognisable for an eye patch worn after being wounded covering conflicts in Sri Lanka in 2001.

Colvin said she would not “hang up my flak jacket” even after that injury.

“So, was I stupid? Stupid I would feel writing a column about the dinner party I went to last night,” she wrote after the attack. “Equally, I’d rather be in that middle ground between a desk job and getting shot, no offense to desk jobs

Ochlik, who had set up a photo agency IP3 Press, won first prize in the general news category of the prestigious 2012 World Press Photo contest for his 12-photograph series titled “Battle For Libya.”

“I just arrived in Homs, it’s dark,” Ochlik wrote to Paris Match correspondent Alfred de Montesquiou on Tuesday. “The situation seems very tense and desperate. The Syrian army is sending in reinforcements now and the situation is going to get worse - from what the rebels tell us.”

“Tomorrow, I’m going to start doing pictures,” he added.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the killings of the journalists, calling them an “unacceptable escalation in the price that local and international journalists are being forced to pay” in Syria.

A statement by Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud said there was “no information” about Colvin, Ochlik and other foreign journalists in Syriawho entered without official permission, the state-run news agency SANA reported. It warned all foreign journalists to come forward to “regularize their status.”

In London, British diplomats summoned Syria’s ambassador to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, asking Syrian officials to facilitate immediate arrangements for the repatriation of the journalists’ bodies and for help with the medical treatment of the British journalist injured in the attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had no information that the bodies of the two slain journalists had been carried out of Homs.

On Tuesday, a Syrian sniper killed Rami al-Sayyed, a prominent activist in Baba Amr who was famous for posting online videos from Homs, colleagues said.

On Jan 11, award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier was killed in Homs. The 43-year-old correspondent for France-2 Television was the first Western journalist to die since the uprising began in March. Syrian authorities have said he was killed in a grenade attack carried out by opposition forces - a claim questioned by the French government, human rights groups and the Syrian opposition.

Last week, New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid died of an apparent asthma attack in Syria after he sneaked in to cover the conflict.

Elsewhere in Syria, the military intensified attacks.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, a main base of the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that Syrian military helicopters fitted with machine guns strafed the village of Ifis. Syrian combat helicopters are primarily Russian-made, though they also have a number of French choppers.

Another opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees, said troops conducted raids in the Damascus district of Mazzeh district and the suburb of Jobar, where dozens of people were detained. In Jobar, the group said troops broke down doors of homes and shops and set up checkpoints.

The group also said troops backed by tanks stormed the southern village of Hirak and conducted a wave of arrests.

In the Gulf nation of Bahrain, some anti-Assad protesters at a Syria-Bahrain Olympic qualifying football match waved the rebel flag and threw shoes at a small group of pro-regime supporters.

Source: agencies

#Syria shelling of Homs kills two Western journalists

The Associated Press

BEIRUT - A French photojournalist and a prominent American war correspondent working for a British newspaper were killed Wednesday by Syrian shelling of the opposition stronghold Homs as President Bashar Assad’s regime escalated its attacks on rebel bases by strafing from helicopter gunships, activists said.

Weeks of withering barrages on the central city of Homs have failed to drive out opposition factions that include rebel soldiers who fled Assad’s forces. Hundreds have died in the siege and the latest deaths further galvanized international pressure on Assad, who appears intent on widening his military crackdowns despite the risk of pushing Syria toward full-scale civil war.

“This tragic incident is another example of the shameless brutality of the Assad regime.” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said of the journalists killed.

“That’s enough now, the regime must go,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy after his government confirmed the two deaths.

French spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse identified those killed as French photojournalist Remi Ochlik and American reporter Marie Colvin, who was working for Britain’s Sunday Times.

France’s Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, said the attacks show the “increasingly intolerable repression” by Syrian forces. French Communication Minister Frederic Mitterrand said of the journalists killed: “It’s abominable.”

Syrian activists said at least two other Western journalists - French reporter Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro and British photographer Paul Conroy of the Sunday Times - were wounded in Wednesday’s shelling, which claimed at least 13 lives.

The Syrian military has intensified its attacks on Homs in the past few days, aiming to retake rebel-held neighborhoods that have become powerful symbols of resistance to Assad’s rule. For the government in Damascus, Homs is a critical battleground to maintain its control of Syria’s third-largest city and keep more rebel pockets from growing elsewhere.

In the northwestern restive province of Idlib, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that Syrian army helicopters fitted with machine guns opened fire on the village of Ifis. Idlib is a main base of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

Another opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees, said troops conducted raids in the Damascus district of Mazzeh district and the suburb Jobar, where dozens of people were detained. In Jobar, the group said troops broke doors of homes and shops and set up checkpoints.

The group also said Syrian troops backed by tanks stormed the southern village of Hirak and launched a wave of arrests.

The Obama administration opened the door slightly Tuesday to international military assistance for Syria’s rebels, with officials saying new tactics may have to be explored if Assad continues to defy pressure to halt a brutal crackdown on dissenters that has raged for 11 months and killed thousands.

The White House and State Department said they still hope 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. It remained unclear, though, what, if any, role the U.S. might play in providing such aid.

A Homs-based activist, Omar Shaker, said the journalists were killed when several rockets hit a garden of a house used by activists and journalists in the besieged Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr, which has come under weeks of heavy bombardment by forces from Assad’s regime. At least 13 people were killed in Wednesday’s shelling, including the journalists, activists said.

The U.N. estimates that 5,400 people have been killed in repression by the regime of President Bashar Assad against a popular uprising that began 11 months ago. Syrian activists, however, put the death toll at more than 7,300.

He added that intense Syrian troops shelling with tanks and artilleries began at 6:30 a.m. and was continuing hours later. He said the apartment used by journalists was hit around 10 a.m.

An amateur video posted online by activist showed what they claimed were bodies of two people in the middle of a heavily damaged house. It said they were of the journalists. One of the dead was wearing what appeared to be a flak jacket.

Many foreign journalists have been sneaking into Syria illegally in the past months with the help of smugglers from Lebanon and Turkey. Although the Syrian government has allowed some journalists into the country their movement is tightly controlled by Information Ministry minders.

Colvin, from Oyster Bay, New York, was in her 50s and a veteran foreign correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Times for the past two decades. She was instantly recognizable for an eye patch worn after being injured covering conflicts in Sri Lanka in 2001.

Colvin said she would not “hang up my flak jacket” even after the eye injury.

“So, was I stupid? Stupid I would feel writing a column about the dinner party I went to last night,” she wrote in the Sunday Times after the attack. “Equally, I’d rather be in that middle ground between a desk job and getting shot, no offense to desk jobs.

In Geneva, the International Red Cross said it was holding talks with members of the opposition Syrian National Council. The ICRC called Tuesday for a daily two-hour halt to fighting in Syria so it can bring emergency aid to affected areas and evacuate the wounded and sick.

Head of ICRI operations for the Middle East, Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the ICRC had almost no contacts with opposition figures inside Syria.

The journalists’ deaths came a day after a Syrian sniper shot dead Rami al-Sayyed, a prominent activist in Baba Amr who was famous for posting online videos, Shaker and the Local Coordination Committees activist group said.

On Jan. 11, award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier was killed in Homs. The 43-year-old correspondent for France-2 Television was the first Western journalist to die since the uprising began in March. Syrian authorities have said he was killed in a grenade attack carried out by opposition forces - a claim questioned by the French government, human rights groups and the Syrian opposition.

Last week, New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid died of an apparent asthma attack in Syria after he sneaked in to cover the conflict.