Foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, 56, killed in Syria

American journalist Marie Colvin, who once called herself a “fireman for the world,” built a reputation as one of the most courageous foreign correspondents of her generation. Her black eye patch — which she had worn since being blinded in her left eye by shrapnel in Sri Lanka in 2001 — made her a recognizable figure during her frequent appearances on cable and broadcast networks internationally.

Hours before her death Wednesday at age 56 in the besieged city of Homs, Syria, Ms. Colvin was interviewed on American and British TV news programs. Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, she described the “horrific” experience of watching a 2-year-old Syrian boy die after a shelling by the Syrian military.

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The mother of slain journalist Marie Colvin invited reporters into her East Norwich, N.Y. home. Fighting back tears, Rosemarie Colvin talked about the life of her war correspondent daughter who was killed Wednesday in Homs, Syria. (Feb. 22)

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 Images of well-known people who have died this year.

When Cooper pressed her on the propriety of publishing such graphic accounts, she was insistent: Media outlets must disseminate stories from war zones.

“That baby,” she said, “probably will move more people to think, ‘What is going on and why is no one stopping this murder in Homs that is happening every day?’”

Ms. Colvin was covering the ongoing armed insurrection in Syria for the Sunday Times of London, which announced her death. She died along with a French photographer, Remi Ochlik, 28, in what Sunday Times editor John Witherow described as a “devastating bombardment by the Syrian army.” At least two other journalists were wounded in the attack, which struck an improvised news media office.

The news came less than a week after Anthony Shadid, a former Washington Post correspondent, died of an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria for the New York Times. At least five other journalists have been killed in the country since November, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organization that promotes freedom of the press.

Ms. Colvin grew up in New York and was deeply influenced by a writing class she took at Yale University with John Hersey, author of a landmark account of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan. His writings, along with those of war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, drew her to journalism.

In her 26-year career with the Sunday Times, Ms. Colvin reported from conflict zones on three continents. She eschewed news conferences and repeatedly risked her life to cover wars from the perspective of ordinary people, particularly women and children. In 1999, she was reportedly one of three journalists — all women — to remain in East Timor to cover the more than 1,000 refugees in a U.N. compound that was under attack by militias.

Some observers credited her reportage with saving the refugees. The United Nations had decided at one point to remove its peacekeepers, but Ms. Colvin’s reports made that position politically unsustainable.

“Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers, children,” she said in 2010 in London at a tribute to journalists killed on assignment. “Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice.”

In her final dispatch, published Feb. 19 in the Sunday Times, Ms. Colvin described such horrors as she witnessed them in Homs.