Syria Live Blog

Syrian authorities were not aware that two Western journalists who were killed Wednesday in Homs had entered the country, said Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud.

"The authorities had no information that the two journalists had entered Syrian territory," he told AFP news agency.

Marie Colvin, an American who worked for The Sunday Times, and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed in Bab Amr district in shelling by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said on Wednesday it was coming to the view that military intervention was the only solution to the nearly year-old crisis.

"We are really close to seeing this military intervention as the only solution. There are two evils, military intervention or protracted civil war," Basma Kodmani, a senior SNC official, told a news conference in Paris. 

Kodmani said the SNC was also proposing that Russia, an ally of Damascus, help persuade Damascus to guarantee safe passage to humanitarian convoys ferrying aid to civilians. 

She said the SNC proposed setting up corridors from Lebanon to the besieged city of Homs, from Turkey to Idlib and from Jordan to Deraa.

The SNC will also urge Egypt, at a Friends of Syria meeting due to be held in Tunis on Friday, to restrict access to the Suez Canal to any ships carrying weapons to the Syrian government. [Reuters]

France's foreign minister has confirmed the death of a French journalist in Homs.

Alain Juppe told reporters after a weekly Cabinet meeting that French authorities have expressed condolences to the journalist's family and were working to obtain the exact details about the killing. He did not identify the journalist.

Juppe said the death points to "the degradation of the situation" and "an increasingly intolerable repression" by Syrian forces.