The killing of two Western journalists in Syria is "another example of the shameless brutality" of the Syrian regime, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told AFP on Wednesday.
American-born Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and freelance French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed in the besieged city of Homs earlier Wednesday by shelling from President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
"This tragic incident is another example of the shameless brutality of the Assad regime," Nuland told AFP as she left Washington on a trip to London with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
British Prime Minister David Cameron paid tribute to Colvin, who was in her mid 50s, at his weekly questions session in parliament, describing her as "talented and respected."
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Sunday Times, said in an email to staff that the company was doing all it could to recover Colvin's body.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy meanwhile said the journalists' deaths showed "that enough is enough, this regime must go."
Colvin was US-born but based in London for many years, and a 30-year career saw her cover some of the world's bloodiest conflicts, and most recently she reported on the Arab Spring from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Ochlik, who was 28, had covered fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, the 2010 presidential elections and cholera epidemic in Haiti and the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Source: AFP American Edition
