Reporter 'wanted to finish story'

Marie Colvin was killed in the war-torn city of Homs, Syria, after saying she wanted to finish 'one more story', her mother said

Published: 12:10pm, 22nd February 2012
Updated: 12:04am, 23rd February 2012

Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin was killed after defying an order to leave the besieged Syrian city of Homs because she wanted to finish "one more story", her mother has said.

The award-winning war reporter, 56, died alongside French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, 28, when the house where they were staying was shelled by Syrian government forces.

Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier, of Le Figaro newspaper, were also injured in the attack.

Fellow journalists mourned the loss of US-born Ms Colvin, highlighting her huge courage in repeatedly placing herself in danger to bear witness to atrocities around the globe.

Her mother Rosemarie said she remained in Homs despite being ordered to get out by her editor because of the risk, adding: "She had to stay. She wanted to finish one more story."

Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sunday Times, said she was "one of the most outstanding foreign correspondents of her generation".

Ms Colvin was the only British newspaper reporter in the opposition stronghold of Homs, which has become a symbol of the 11-month uprising against Syrian president Bashar Assad. Syrian activists accused Assad's forces of deliberately targeting the journalists in the rocket and shell attacks on the city, which they said killed at least 13 people.

In Britain, David Cameron joined tributes to Ms Colvin, telling MPs at Prime Minister's Questions: "This is a desperately sad reminder of the risks that journalists take to inform the world of what is happening and the dreadful events in Syria."

In an interview with the BBC just the day before her death, she described watching a two-year-old boy who had been hit by shrapnel die in a makeshift clinic. She said: "The doctor just said 'I can't do anything'. His little tummy just kept heaving until he died. That is happening over and over and over.

"No one here can understand how the international community can let this happen, particularly when we have an example of Srebrenica - shelling of a city, lots of investigations by the United Nations after that massacre, lots of vows to never let it happen again."