Marie Colvin Dead: Syrian Government Denies Responsibility For Deaths Of Foreign Journalists
The foreign ministry of Syria has claimed the government was not responsible for the deaths of two Western journalists and around 20 other people in the embattled city of Homs on Wednesday.
The foreign ministry said in a statement:
"On the human level, we offer condolences to the media institutions and the families of the journalists who died on the Syrian territories."
"[But] we reject statements holding Syria responsible for the deaths of journalists who sneaked into its territory at their own risk."
Meanwhile some of the journalists wounded in yesterdays attack which killed in rocket attacks on a makeshift media centre on Wednesday, including Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, as well as a 6-year-old boy, have called for safe passage from the city to receive medical attention.
In videos posted on YouTube the journalists, who include the Sunday Times' Paul Conroy, said they urgently needed to leave.
WATCH: wounded journalists speak from Homs
Elsewhere, in the Al-Qusoor area of Homs Syrians held a protest in solidarity with the dead journalists and others who had been killed.
Video of the protest posted online by citizen journalists showed a sign being held up to the camera which read "Remi Ochlik – Marie Colvin – We will not forget you".
Homs came under renewed bombardment on Thursday, activists said. Al Jazeera reported "intense barrages" in Baba Amr, the neighbourhood which has been under siege for 19 days.
The activist network Avaaz also reported that seven people had been executed attempting to bring medical supplies into Homs.
Avaaz said: "They were eager to bring a respirator and other medicines to the makeshift hospital near the media centre, but to do this they had to travel through an area controlled by the Syrian army. The walk should have taken half an hour.
"During the morning they failed to make contact with outside colleagues, and at 2.30pm they were found by another member of the humanitarian supply network on the road just outside Baba Amr.
"The seven men had had their hands tied behind their backs and had been shot dead. The respirator was gone, and some of the medicines were strewn across the road. The two other members of the party, one a foreign paramedic, had disappeared."
The Local Coordination Committees said at least three people had been killed around the country, and that the government was continuing to arbitrarily arrest members of the opposition.
Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in a Facebook group for foreign correspondents that Homs was now completely encircled by the Syrian army.
"The roads out of Homs towards Lebanon are effectively blocked by the Syrian army at the moment," he said.
"There is no refrigeration, ice, or electricity to keep their bodies refrigerated, so there is an increasing likelihood that they will have to be buried in Homs if we don't manage to move things very quickly.
"And the same blocked roads prevent the movement of the wounded. No real progress on the diplomatic front."
Last night the Syrian Ambassador to London, Dr Sami Khiyami, was summoned to the Foreign Office and told the government was "horrified" by the ongoing violence in the city.
British foreign secretary William Hague again criticised the Syrian regime, and in an interview with the BBC said: "It is a deeply frustrating situation... people have been dying in their thousands.
"The Assad regime has continued to act seemingly with impunity."
He said an international conference in Tunisia on Friday would seek to agree a "wide set of measures across a large group of nations", and there would be further efforts to bolster UN sanctions next week.
The aim was to tighten the "diplomatic and economic stranglehold" on the Middle East state.
"Do not underestimate the cumulative impact of that over time," Hague said.
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Huffington Post UK Michael Rundle First Posted: 23/02/2012 09:53 Updated: 23/02/2012 17:00