News of the deaths of Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik and the serious injuries of photographer Paul Conroy and Edith Bouvier, a freelance journalist reporting for Le Figaro, from a mortar shell that hit the building in Homs, Syria that they were using as makeshift media centre, has saddened and shocked reporters and readers.
So does a sobering list of more than fifteen of their professional colleagues who have also died reporting the Arab Spring. Worse still are reports that the journalists may have been deliberately targeted by the Syrian government forces. It is a reminder that journalists are offered too little protection by international law.
