2 foreign journalists killed in Syria

A U.S. and a French journalist were killed in the central Syrian city of Homs today, the 19th day of intense shelling by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad bent on quashing a growing opposition, the ABC reports.

The deaths of American Marie Colvin and Frechman Remi Ochlik were confirmed by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. They come less than a week after New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid died in northern Syria from an apparent asthma attack and a day after well-known Syrian opposition Rami al-Sayed journalist died in Homs.

The two foreign journalists were among 27 people killed in Syria on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Local Coordinating Committees in Syria, an activist group, with some 20 of them in Homs and the rest scattered around the country. Overall, the United Nations stopped tallying the death toll in the 11-month uprising after it passed 5,400 in January, because it could no longer verify the numbers, the New York Times reports.