Veteran journalist Marie Colvin is believed to have been killed in the Syrian city of Homs.

According to Reuters, the American-born Ms Colvin and a French photographer were trapped in a house that was being shelled, but were hit in a rocket attack as they attempted to flee.

A longtime foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times, Ms Colvin covered the Middle East for much of her career including as Jerusalem correspondent. She spoke at a London panel on media coverage hosted by the Masorti movement in 2002, when she argued that journalists did not go to the Middle East "with an agenda".

She said during the discussion: "If senior journalists from major news organisations from across the world… all see one thing, maybe you should think further than shouting 'that can't be true' at us."

In 1990 Ms Colvin presented a documentary on then-Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. "Behind the Myth" looked at his family life, his rise to become leader of the PLO and his years of international terrorism.

Known for wearing an eye patch after she lost an eye to a shrapnel wound in Sri Lanka in 2001 , Ms Colvin was considered one of the most important journalists writing about conflict zones today.