Cameron Says Wounded British Journalist Safe in Beirut
Wounded photographer Paul Conroy was taken to Britain's embassy in the Lebanese capital Beirut after he was smuggled out of the besieged Syrian city of Homs, Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday.
"I can tell the House that Paul Conroy is now safe," Cameron told parliament. "He has been in our embassy in Beirut in Lebanon, he has been properly looked after and I am sure that soon he will want to come home."
Cameron paid tribute to Conroy's bravery and to the activists who helped him leave Homs, where he was injured in a rocket attack on a makeshift media center which killed veteran reporter Marie Colvin and a French photographer.
International activist group Avaaz said 13 activists were killed trying to help Conroy, a freelancer who was working for Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, and other Western journalists as they tried to flee Syria on Tuesday.
Cameron said: "I certainly pay tribute to him and also above all pay tribute to the very brave people who helped him to get out of Syria, many of whom have paid an incredibly high price."
Conroy, a 47-year-old father of three, has leg wounds that had been in danger of becoming infected.
The Sunday Times had confirmed on Tuesday that he was safely out of Syria.
A French journalist also wounded in the attack, Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro, was said by the newspaper on Tuesday to be still in Syria despite reports that she too had reached Lebanon.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to retract an earlier statement that Bouvier, who has multiple fractures, had been rescued from the battered Baba Amr district of Homs.
Two other foreign journalists, the Paris-based William Daniels and Javier Espinosa, of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, are also still in Homs but were unhurt in the attack.
Source: Agence France Presse
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