Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik killed in Syria

CAIRO — Two Western journalists, one American and one French, were killed early Wednesday in Syria as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad pursued a deadly bombardment of the central city of Homs, according to activists and officials.

Marie Colvin,  an American reporter working for The Sunday Times of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer,  were killed in Syria on Wednesday Feb 22

Valérie Pécresse, the French government spokeswoman, identified the dead as Marie Colvin, an American reporter working for The Sunday Times of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer.

The deaths were reported less than a week after Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died of an apparent asthma attack on his way back to Turkey on Thursday after spending nearly a week reporting covertly inside Syria.

The two foreign journalists were among 27 people killed in Syria on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Local Coordinating Committees in Syria, an activist group, with some 20 of them in Homs and the rest scattered around the country. Overall, the United Nations stopped tallying the death toll in the 11-month uprising after it passed 5,400 in January, because it could no longer verify the numbers.

Mr. Ochlik, in his late 20s, had covered wars and upheaval in Haiti, Congo and the Middle East. Ms. Colvin, 55, was a veteran of many conflicts from the Middle East to Chechnya and from the Balkans to Iraq and Sri Lanka, where she lost an eye covering a civil war. She wore a distinctive black eyepatch. Both had won awards for their work.