Bodies of Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlik arrive in Paris

Syria: The bodies of two Western journalists killed in Syria were being returned to Paris overnight, France's ambassador to Damascus Eric Chevallier told AFP. "I confirm that... the bodies of Remi Ochlick and Marie Colvin are aboard the Air France flight which has just left Damascus bound for Paris," he said.

The bodies were being transported by Air France flight 571 from Damascus to Paris via Amman which left the Syrian capital at 0025 local time on Sunday (2225 GMT on Saturday).

The body of Marie Colvin was expected to be flown on to her native United States on Monday or Tuesday, according to a representative of her newspaper, The Sunday Times.

Colvin and her French colleague Ochlik were killed in a rocket attack in the rebel Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs on February 22.

Their bodies were earlier on Saturday handed over to diplomats and taken to the French hospital in the Kassah neighbourhood.

Ambassador Chevallier boarded an ambulance that carried the body of Ochlik, while a Polish diplomat went in a separate car behind another ambulance that carried Colvin's body The coffins were kept in the hospital's morgue while plans were finalised to fly them to Paris.

The bodies were formally identified in Damascus on Friday by French and Polish diplomats.

US interests in Syria are being looked after by the Poles.

The Sunday Times has said Colvin and Ochlik were killed when a rocket hit the front of the building they were in, burying them both in debris.

French reporter Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro newspaper and British photographer Paul Conroy were wounded in the same attack. Bouvier, 31, and photographer William Daniels, 34, who was not hurt in the rocket attack, were smuggled out of Homs by activists earlier this week to Lebanon and then flown to France.

The pair recounted their harrowing experience from the moment Syrian rockets began hitting their makeshift media centre, and said Syrian forces seemed to be directly targeting journalists in Homs.

"There were at least five successive explosions, very near. We really had the impression that we were directly targeted," the Figaro daily quoted one of them as saying.

AFP