RIP, a truly brave woman and the only consolation is I guess she died doing what she loved
Veteran Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin 'killed in heavy shelling in Syria' just hours after broadcast on ITN News At Ten
* French photographer Remi Ochlik also died in shelling, according to reports
* They were killed in attack on a makeshift media centre set up by anti-Assad activists
Foreign correspondent Marie Colvin has been killed in Syria
Sunday Times war reporter Marie Colvin has been killed in heavy shelling in Syria, it has been reported by Reuters.
The news comes just hours after the foreign correspondent reported on 'sickening' scenes in the war-torn city of Homs.
French photographer Remi Ochlik, 28, is also said to have died in the attack on a makeshift media centre set up by anti-regime activists in the Baba Amr district.
Reports say they were escaping from the building when they were hit by a rocket.
Homs has been under siege from President Bashar al-Assad's forces since February 4.
Last night Colvin, who is in her fifties, appeared on Channel 4 and ITN's News at Ten reporting on the bombardment of the opposition stronghold.
In a piece for the Sunday Times this weekend, Colvin spoke of the citizens of the city 'waiting for a massacre'.
She wrote: 'The scale of human tragedy in the city is immense. The inhabitants are living in terror. Almost every family seems to have suffered the death or injury of a loved one.'
Throughout her career Colvin covered many conflicts around the globe, most recently Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in the grips of the Arab spring.
In 2010 Colvin spoke about the dangers of reporting on warzones at a ceremony marking journalists killed in the line of duty.
'Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children,' she said at the event on Fleet Street.
'Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice.
'We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?
'Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price.'
Although her area of speciality was the Arab and Persian world, she also worked in Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka, where she was injured and lost her eye in an ambush, when she was targeted by government soldiers for her work with the Tamil Tigers.
Fire and smoke rising from buildings in the Baba Amro neighbourhood in Homs during an attack by Syrian forces yesterday
Frontline: Marie Colvin had been reporting on the Siege of Homs
She won the British press award for 'Best Foreign Correspondent' twice, for her work in reporting the conflict in Yugoslavia, Iran, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe; the International Women’s Media Foundation award for 'Courage in Journalism' for her coverage of Kosovo and Chechnya, and the Foreign Press Association's Journalist of the Year award.
Colvin, who was married three times, wrote and produced the BBC documentary Arafat: Behind the Myth and presented a documentary on Martha Gellhorn, the war correspondent famed for her coverage of the Spanish Civil War.
Earlier this year photographer Ochlik won a World Press Photo Award for his work in Libya last year.
It was also reported that Rami al-Sayed, a citizen journalist who provided media outlets with live footage from Homs, was killed in the shelling, while British photojournalist Paul Conroy, who has worked closely with Ms Colvin in the past, was also injured.
Activists said that 100 people had been killed in the latest series of attacks.
According to the Local Co-Ordination Committees, around 45 people were killed in Homs after the resumption of heavy shelling on the beleaguered city.
As reports of Marie Colvin's death broke, many took to Twitter to pay tribute to the journalist
Just yesterday activists warned of a new round of fierce and bloody urban combat being unleashed - despite efforts by the Red Cross to broker a cease-fire to allow emergency aid in.
A flood of military reinforcements has been a prelude to previous offensives by President Bashar Assad's regime, which has tried to use its overwhelming firepower to crush an opposition that has been bolstered by defecting soldiers and hardened by 11 months of street battles.
Shells reportedly rained down Tuesday on rebellious districts at a rate of 10 per minute at one point and the Red Cross called for a daily two-hour cease-fire so that it can deliver emergency aid to the wounded and sick.
It has also been reported that food and water are running dangerously low int he city.
'If they don't die in the shelling, they will die of hunger,' activist and resident Omar Shaker told The Associated Press after hours of intense shelling concentrated on the rebel-held neighborhood of Baba Amr that the opposition has extolled as a symbol of their 11-month uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime.
Another 33 people were killed in northern Syria's mountainous Jabal al-Zawiya region when government forces raided a town in pursuit of regime opponents, raising Tuesday's overall death toll to 63, activists said. The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group, said more than 100 were killed Tuesday, but the report could not immediately be confirmed by others.
Russia, one of Assad's remaining allies, urged the United Nations to send a special envoy to Syria to help coordinate security issues and delivery of humanitarian assistance.
Assad's forces showed no sign of easing their assault on Homs, Syria's third-largest city, whose defiance has become an embarrassing counterpoint to the regime's insistence that the opposition is mostly armed factions with limited public support.
The rebel defenses in Homs are believed to be bolstered by hundreds of military defectors, which has possibly complicated attempts by Syrian troops to stage an offensive.
VIDEO: Marie Colvin spoke to Channel 4 News on 21 Feb 2012
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