New York Times correspondent dies in Syria

PanARMENIAN.Net - Anthony Shadid, a gifted foreign correspondent, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, whose dispatches for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Associated Press covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict and turmoil, died, apparently of an asthma attack, on Thursday, Feb 16, while on a reporting assignment in Syria, The Times said.

Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer who was with Shadid, carried his body across the border to Turkey.

Shadid, 43, had been reporting inside Syria for a week, gathering information on the Free Syrian Army and other armed elements of the resistance to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose military forces have been engaged in a harsh repression of the political opposition in a conflict that is now nearly a year old.

The Syrian government, which tightly controls foreign journalists’ activities in the country, had not been informed of his assignment by The Times.

The exact circumstances of Shadid’s death and his precise location inside Syria when it happened were not immediately clear.

But Hicks said that Shadid, who had asthma and had carried medication with him, began to show symptoms as both of them were preparing to leave Syria on Thursday, and the symptoms escalated into what became a fatal attackHicks telephoned his editors at The Times, and a few hours later he was able to take Shadid’s body into Turkey.