The editor of the Sunday Times paid tribute to "extraordinary" foreign correspondent Marie Colvin after she was killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs today.
John Witherow said she was an "extraordinary figure" who was "driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered."
The veteran foreign correspondent died alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik when the house where they were staying was shelled by Syrian government forces.
Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sunday Times, described Ms Colvin as "one of the most outstanding foreign correspondents of her generation".
Paul Conroy, a freelance photographer working for the Sunday Times, was also injured in the attack but initial reports suggest he was not seriously hurt, the newspaper said.
US-born Ms Colvin was the only British newspaper reporter in the opposition stronghold of Homs, a leading focus of unrest in the 11-month uprising against president Bashar Assad.
British prime minister David Cameron said her death was a "desperately sad reminder" of the risks journalists take to inform the world. Our thoughts are with her family and her friends.”
British Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “The journalistic community have lost one of their finest and their most fearless. Marie Colvin was not only a brave and tireless reporter across many continents and in many difficult situations, she was also an inspiration to women in her profession. Her reports in the hours before her death showed her work at her finest.”
In her final dispatches, Ms Colvin sought to alert the world to the human tragedy unfolding in Homs, which has been subjected to repeated heavy bombardments by Dr Assad’s forces.
She told the BBC yesterday: “I watched a little baby die today - absolutely horrific, just a two-year-old been hit, they stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest.
“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.”
Describing the situation in Homs as “absolutely sickening”, she said: “There’s just shells, rockets and tank fire pouring into civilian areas of this city, and it’s just unrelenting.”
In a front-page article published in the Sunday Times at the weekend, Ms Colvin reported that wounded civilians in the Baba Amr area of Homs were being treated by a vet because no doctors were available. "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," she wrote.
Over her distinguished career, Ms Colvin, from Oyster Bay, New York, reported on conflicts around the world, including in Kosovo, Chechnya and Sierra Leone.
She wore a black eyepatch after losing an eye when she was wounded by shrapnel while covering Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2001.
Her recent reporting focused on countries caught up in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, among them Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Addressing a memorial service in November 2010 for British journalists killed reporting conflicts, Ms Colvin summarised the foreign correspondent’s job succinctly.
“Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice,” she said. “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.”
Fellow journalists and politicians paid tribute to Ms Colvin’s immense courage in repeatedly placing herself in danger to bear witness to appalling atrocities.
ITV News international editor Bill Neely said: “She took the deep breath over and over and plunged herself in, as deep as she could, to scoop out the nuggets we all need to know.
“And we were all, as a people, better for her. Her final dispatch was as deep as they come, in the ‘widow’s cellar’ where women and children cower from Dr Assad’s assault and death feels imminent.
“At a time when journalists are being examined as never before, it’s time to acknowledge someone who made a difference, a moral difference, to our country and our lives. That was Marie.”
Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow wrote on Twitter: “Utterly devastating: the most courageous journalist I ever knew and a wonderful reporter and writer."
Agencies