The British government has said it is doing "everything we possibly can" to get an injured Sunday Times photographer out of the besieged Syrian city of Homs.

Paul Conroy was injured on Wednesday in the same attack that killed veteran Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin.

International development secretary Andrew Mitchell told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "We are doing everything we possibly can. The Foreign Office have been seeking to negotiate with the Syrian authorities. Our ambassador in Damascus is engaged in trying to do just that. It is extremely difficult and the conversations are patchy."

Conroy's wife, Kate, told Broadcasting House on BBC Radio 4 yesterday that her husband had refused to leave Homs with humanitarian organisation the Syrian Red Crescent last week because he did not trust them "unless they had somebody from the British or French Embassy with them as an escort".

France's president Nicolas Sarkozy told a French radio station this morning that a "solution" was being drawn up to get Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier out of Homs.

He told RTL: "We have the beginnings of a solution. It seems that things are starting to move."