Award-winning Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin was killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs today.
The veteran foreign correspondent died alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik when the house where they were staying came under fire.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was investigating reports that a British photographer was also injured in the incident.
French government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse confirmed the deaths after Syrian government forces shelled the city of Homs.
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It comes after a French journalist was killed last month in Homs when a shell exploded during a visit organised by the Syrian government.
Large numbers of civilians have been killed in recent days during apparently indiscriminate shelling of its own people by the Syrian regime according to numerous media reports.
Colvin, who grew up in Long Island, New York, covered war zones in Chechnya, Kosovo and Sierra Leone in a lengthy career.
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The Middle-East specialist, who worked for the Sunday Times for more than a decade, recently visited Tunisia, Egypt and Libya to cover the Arab Spring.
It was while working in Sri Lanka that a grenade attack left her blind in one eye and forced to wear an eye patch to cover up the injury.
Colvin, the only British newspaper reporter in Homs, spoke to the BBC only yesterday from the besieged city, telling viewers she had seen a baby boy die after he was hit by shrapnel.
She reported on the “sickening” scenes she had witnessed, saying: “I watched a little baby die today. Absolutely horrific, just a two-year-old.”
Colvin, who was educated at Yale, started her career as a police reporter for a news agency in New York before moving to Paris and then London.
She was featured in the 2005 documentary Bearing Witness about women war reporters and was named foreign reporter of the year at the 2010 British Press Awards.
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