French Journalist Killed in Homs as Syria Situation Deteriorates
Update (11:12 a.m. EST): The Guardian's Ian Black was at the scene, and shared this brief account of Jacquier's death on his paper's live blog of the events in Syria (we've excerpted here):
As we were leaving a march was beginning, a march in solidarity with the Syrian regime- the sort of thing that happens quite a lot particularly when foreign journalists and especially television cameras are there.
There was a second group of journalists travelling separately from our group and who we've been told were filming the march as it was setting off when we think a vehicle in which they were travelling was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
We don't have any further details. But what this does appear to be is the first time that a foreign journalist has been killed in the violence accompanying the uprising in Syria.
Update (11:06 a.m. EST): According to an MSNBC report, the explosion that killed Jaqcuier killed seven other people and wounded 25. An updated version of that BBC story to which we linked earlier says one of those injured was a Belgian radio reporter. According to a translated version of his France 2 biography page, Jaqcier was a cameraman who got his start covering the conflict in Kosovo, and has since reported in Zaire, Algeria, and the Middle East. He told the France 2 interviewer he hates war but he likes filming conflict situations because he captures raw emotions.
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Update (10:45 a.m. EST): It appears only one journalist was killed as he covered the situation for French television. CNN's Hala Gorani tweets: "Sadly, we can report that French journalist Gilles Jaqcuier of France Television was killed in Homs today." A report from CBS and the AP has more details:
CBS News producer Agnes Reau reports from Homs that the incident happened at a hospital shortly after a CBS News group departed from it. A group of journalists went to see what had happened after a mortar round hit the hospital's grounds when another round was fired, Reau reports.
Original: The news from Syria is often grim these days, but on Wednesday it had an extra air of tragedy: Two journalists covering the unrest there were reportedly killed in an explosion during a demonstration. The news came as part of a larger report from the BBC that an Arab League monitor had resigned from an observation mission there in disgust, calling the league's effort there a "farce." One of the journalists was a belgian national, the BBC reported, and the two were "killed in Homs when rockets were fired at a demonstration." Reuters reported that a Western journalist was killed by "grenades or rocket fire."
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The deaths come as the government in Syria apparently continues cracking down on protesters, bucking an Arab League plan to stop the violence, the BBC reports. The ex-monitor "said the government had "fabricated" most of what the monitors had seen to stop the Arab League taking action," according to the BBC. "On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council was told that an estimated 400 people had been killed in Syria since the Arab League mission arrived in late December - an average of almost 40 deaths a day."
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