An award-winning journalist who slipped into Syria to report on the uprising against its president has died of an apparent asthma attack.
New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid (43) a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who strove to capture untold stories in Middle East conflicts from Libya to Iraq, died in eastern Syria, the newspaper said.
He had been shot in the West Bank in 2002 and kidnapped for six days in Libya last year.
Times photographer Tyler Hicks was with him and carried his body to Turkey, the newspaper said.
"Anthony was one of our generation's finest reporters," Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger said.
“He was also an exceptionally kind and generous human being. He brought to his readers an up-close look at the globe’s many war-torn regions, often at great personal risk. We were fortunate to have Anthony as a colleague and we mourn his death.”
Mr Shadid’s father Buddy said his son had suffered with asthma all his life and had medication with him.
“(But) he was walking to the border because it was too dangerous to ride in the car,” he said. “He was walking behind some horses - he’s more allergic to those than anything else - and he had an asthma attack.”
The Times said Mr Shadid and Mr Hicks were recently helped by smugglers through the border area in Turkey adjoining Syria's Idlib province and were met by guides on horseback.
Mr Hicks told the newspaper that Mr Shadid suffered one bout of asthma the first night, followed by a more severe attack a week later on the way out.
“I stood next to him and asked if he was OK, and then he collapsed,” Mr Hicks said.
Mr Hicks said Mr Shadid was not conscious and that his breathing was “very faint” and “very shallow”. He said that after a few minutes he could see Mr Shadid “was no longer breathing”.
Mr Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent, leaves a wife, Nada Bakri, and a son and a daughter. He had worked previously for the AP, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He won Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting in 2004 and 2010 for his Iraq coverage.
In 2004, the Pulitzer Board praised “his extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril, the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended”.
AP senior managing editor John Daniszewski, who worked with Mr Shadid in Baghdad during the US invasion in 2003, called him “a brilliant colleague who stood out both for his elegant writing and for his deep and nuanced understanding" of the region.
“He was calm under fire and quietly daring, the most admired of his generation of foreign correspondents,” Mr Daniszewski said.
Mr Shadid had been reporting in Syria for a week, gathering information on the resistance to the Syrian government and calls for president Bashar Assad to step down, the Times said. The exact circumstances and location of his death were unclear, it said.
Mr Shadid, long known for covering wars and other conflicts in the Middle East, was among four reporters detained for six days by Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gadafy last March.
AP