U.S.-born journalist Marie Colvin dead as Syria targets press center, Feb 2012

Syrian forces may have murdered Marie Colvin after pledging to kill 'any journalist who set foot on Syrian soil', it was claimed today.

The 55-year-old Sunday Times reporter died alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik, 28, in a rocket attack on the besieged city of Homs this morning.

Communication between Syrian Army officers intercepted by Lebanese intelligence staff has revealed that direct orders were issued to target the makeshift press centre in which Colvin had been broadcasting.

If journalists were successfully killed, then the Syrians were told to make out that they had died accidentally in fire fights with terrorist groups, the radio traffic revealed.
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'Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death... and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash,' she said at the event in St Bride's Church, Fleet Street.

'And yes, it means taking risks, not just for yourself but often for the people who work closely with you.

'Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes... the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years.

'Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers, children.'
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It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and bursts of gunfire. 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. Freezing rain fills potholes and snow drifts in through windows empty of glass. No shops are open, so families are sharing what they have with relatives and neighbours. Many of the dead and injured are those who risked foraging for food.
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Frigga said:

Didn't I just hear a phone report on Anderson Copper 360 last night with Marie where they were showing the film footage of the little two year old boy, who died in front of her eyes in a makeshift hospital from shrapnel wounds?

I could swear it was her?!

SO SAD.

I was even thinking as I watched the report that she must be in grave danger herself, as the entire city was being shelled, was surrounded by snipers who are ready to shoot anyone trying to escape, with NO WHERE for occupants to go or run; only able to hide on the bottom floors of their buildings, hoping to survive while waiting for help (us) to do something.

I am just sick over this.

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Her dispatch in last week’s Sunday Times was as painful and brilliant a piece of war reporting as I have ever read. Her description of 300 people, huddled in a wood factory cellar known as “the widows’ basement” under constant bombardment was searing. Yesterday, speaking on Skype from the house in Baba Amr, the district of Homs where she was staying, she described watching a baby die. “This is the worst we’ve ever seen,” she told me. “And they’re getting away with it.”

She said “we” because she and I have been in many war zones together, but Marie always went further and stayed longer than almost anyone else. It was partly because, as a Sunday newspaper journalist, she had more time, and partly because she was just braver.We drove out of Jenin together after the Israeli siege. My team had been in for a few hours, while she had spent several days living in a Palestinian house, experiencing the bombardment and the demolitions by armoured bulldozers alongside them.
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Her sympathies were always with the victims of violence.
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‘Our mission is to speak truth to power,’ she once said. ‘We send home that first rough draft of history.’
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She liked to do things her own way: When a smoking ban came into force at the Sunday Times, she blithely turned up with three packets of cigarettes and puffed away at her desk; typically, no one dared stop her.
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Another time, she claimed on expenses for expensive underwear stolen in East Timor – later telling Vogue in an interview that such items were essential for a woman in a war zone.
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