Foreign journalist rescued from Homs...

The good news is that Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy, wounded in the attack that killed Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, is now reported to have made his way out of that battered city and into Lebanon.

The bad news is that, the whereabouts and condition of three other foreign journalists who were in the city – Edith Bouvier, William Daniels, and Javier Espinosa – are not known. And in the case of Mr. Conroy, his escape came at the expense of more blood. The Guardian reports that a number of the Syrian activists who smuggled him out of the city were gunned down in the process:

The dramatic nature of Conroy's evacuation underlines the high level of risk being faced by those who have been trying to run medical, food and other supplies into the besieged suburbs of Homs and evacuate the injured, including foreign journalists. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which has recently moved the elite 4th Division commanded by his brother Maher into the battle for Homs, has been using a foreign-supplied drone to target its artillery and mortar fire into the city. Conroy had twice refused to leave Baba Amr without the body of Colvin, who was killed during a rocket attack last Wednesday. The group of reporters has been holed up in Baba Amr ever since and protracted negotiations to evacuate them have failed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said earlier today that Le Figaro's Bouvier, who suffered a serious leg injury, had also made her way safely to Lebanon. But he soon retracted that comment.

Though the world's focus should be on the citizens of Homs, who have born the brunt of a ferocious onslaught for weeks, the killing of the foreign reporters has brought a spurt of international attention to the Syrian crackdown. The deaths, as well as the passing of The New York Time's Anthony Shadid as he was being smuggled out of Syria, have also led to a fair deal of soul-searching and debate among the community of reporters who cover conflict in the region.

The reporters in Homs were gathered in what's been described as a media center, but was effectively a makeshift office for foreign reporters and opposition activists. The office was a node of phone calls and other forms of communications that Assad's forces probably have the ability to monitor. Brian Conley, who runs an NGO that trains local journalists in conflict zones in how to get their stories out safely, says the center apparently had a VSAT hookup for Internet communications, which would have been a like a "giant radio beacon" if the Syrian military had the equipment to detect it. A site with signs of that kind of activity would be an inviting target for Assad's gunners.

Now in online forums and articles, there's a lively debate about how to stay safe. On private mailing lists and discussion groups for reporters, there have been complaints about news reports revealing too much detail about how reporters are smuggled in and out of Syria, and worries about deliberate Syrian efforts to kill foreign reporters.

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