Updated | 11:20 a.m. Edith Bouvier and Paul Conroy, two foreign journalists who were wounded on Wednesday during an attack on a media center in the Syrian city of Homs that killed two of their colleagues, appealed for help in new video messages posted online by activists on Thursday.
In her video, Ms. Bouvier, who reports for the French newspaper Le Figaro, described her injuries and asked that she be allowed to leave the city, which is besieged by Syrian government forces, and travel to Lebanon for medical treatment. Her French-language appeal was echoed by a doctor and an activist who spoke in Arabic and English.
According to Ms. Bouvier, her message was recorded on Thursday, at about 3 p.m. in Homs, which means that it was posted on YouTube just an hour later.
William Daniels, a Paris-based photographer working for Le Figaro and Time, also spoke in the video. He explained that Ms. Bouvier urgently needs an operation she cannot have in the embattled neighborhood of Baba Amr. Mr. Daniels added that, despite her injuries and the scarcity of food and electricity in the area, Ms. Bouvier’s morale remains high.
Asked by an activist to make it clear that the journalists were not being held prisoner, Mr. Williams said that they had been treated very well.
Near the end of the message, Khaled Abu Salah, a spokesman for the Revolution Leadership Council of Homs who has narrated several of the video reports posted online by activists, appealed to the French government and the Red Cross to evacuate the injured journalists. An English-speaking activist urged the international community to take the responsibility for the care of the injured foreigners off the shoulders of the besieged city’s residents.
In a second video message posted online a short time later, Mr. Conroy, a British photographer, said that he was wounded in “a rocket attack” that killed his colleague Marie Colvin, a correspondent for London’s Sunday Times, along with Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer, on Wednesday. Mr. Conroy appealed for help and said that he was being treated by “the Free Syrian Army medical staff.” He also said, “it’s important to add that I’m here as a guest and not captured.”
So far, the Syrian government has shown little sympathy for the plight of foreign journalists who have been wounded or killed while reporting on the conflict. On Thursday, Syria’s official news agency posted a statement from the government in response to the death of three journalists in the past week under the headline: “Foreign Ministry Calls on Foreign Journalists to Respect Journalistic Work Laws in Syria and Not Enter It Illegally.”
According to the news agency, the foreign ministry advised reporters to work only with the explicit permission of the government and “stressed the necessity for foreign journalists to respect the laws regulating journalistic work in Syria and avoid breaching laws and entering the Syrian territories illegally to access turbulent and unsafe places.”
In an apparent reference to the attack on the rebellious quarter of Homs that killed Ms. Colvin and Mr. Ochlik on Wednesday — and the death of Anthony Shadid, the New York Times correspondent who died in northern Syria last week — the foreign ministry spokesman said, “On the human level, we offer condolences to the media institutions and the families of the journalists who died on the Syrian territories.”
According to the government news agency, the spokesman, however, rejected “all statements that hold Syria accountable for the death of journalists who infiltrated Syria at their own risk without the Syrian authorities’ knowledge of their entry and whereabouts.”
Late on Wednesday, Syrian activists posted video of a rally in Homs in honor of Ms. Colvin and Mr. Ochlik.
