Region | Syria
Dialogue futile in stopping Syria bloodshed, Saudi king tells Russia
Opposition presses for foreign intervention as death toll rises in Homs
- Gulf News Report
- Published: 00:00 February 23, 2012
- Image Credit: AFP
- A combination of two pictures made on February 22, 2012 shows (at L) US-born journalist Marie Colvin in a recent picture released by the Sunday Times, and (at R) freelance French photojournalist Remi Ochlik in an AFP picture taken on February 2005. France identified two Western reporters killed in Syria on February 22, 2012 as veteran American war correspondent Marie Colvin of Britain's Sunday Times and freelance French photojournalist Remi Ochlik. Colvin was a renowned reporter who had covered countless conflicts over 30 years and wore a distinctive eye patch after she was wounded in Sri Lanka. She was voted Foreign Correspondent of the Year in the 2010 British Press Awards. Ochlik was a 28-year-old photographer represented by the IP3 agency, which he co-founded in Paris, who quit his studies aged 20 to report on Haiti and has since covered many of the recent upheavals in the Arab world.
Dubai Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz yesterday told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that dialogue on Syria was "futile", hinting at the need for action to halt the rising death toll.
Russia should have "coordinated with the Arabs ... before using the veto" to block a resolution on Syria in the UN Security Council, King Abdullah said.
"But now, dialogue about what is happening in Syria is futile," the king told Medvedev in a telephone discussion on the escalating crisis.
His comments came as the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said it was coming to the conclusion that foreign military help was needed.
"We are really close to seeing this military intervention as the only solution. There are two evils, military intervention or protracted civil war," Basma Kodmani, a senior SNC official, said in Paris.
Yesterday, 26 people were killed as Syrian forces pounded the rebel city of Homs. The latest barrage came a day after security forces killed at least 68 across the country.
The SNC said it will use an international meeting in Tunis tomorrow to push for urgent measures to get humanitarian aid to civilians.
"Our main objective is to get acknowledgement that this is a humanitarian crisis and then to ensure an urgent humanitarian solution is found," Kodmani said.
"I don't see how Russia or China can be opposed if it is negotiated with them."
Shell attack: two journalists killed
American journalist Marie Colvin and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed in Homs yesterday.
Freelance photographer Paul Conroy and journalist Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro were injured when a shell crashed into a makeshift media centre in the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs.
Colvin was instantly recognisable for an eyepatch worn after being injured covering conflicts in Sri Lanka in 2001. "So, was I stupid? Stupid I would feel writing a column about the dinner party I went to last night," she wrote in the Sunday Times after that attack. Syrian Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud said authorities were not aware that the journalists were in the country.
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