Marie Colvin funeral to be held in New York this weekend

The funeral of Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, who was killed covering the uprising in Syria, will take place in New York this weekend.

Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik died on 22 February while trapped inside the besieged city of Homs. Her body is currently en route to the USA.

According to Associated Press, a wake will be held on Saturday and Sunday and a funeral mass celebrated on Monday at 11am.

Paying tribute to Colvin last month, Sunday Times editor John Witherow said she was "much more than a war reporter".

He said: "She was a woman with a tremendous joie de vivre, full of humour and mischief and surrounded by a large circle of friends, all of whom feared the consequences of her bravery."

He added that she was "was an extraordinary figure in the life of the Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered".

"She believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice. Above all, as we saw in her powerful report last weekend, her thoughts were with the victims of violence.

Her colleague, photographer Paul Conroy, who was injured in the attack and is now safely back in the UK, said this weekend: "Marie was a unique person. To work with her was an absolute privilege. She's tenacious, one of the bravest people I know.

"We never get the choice of how we die, but Marie died doing something she was completely passionate about. She was in one of the most dangerous situations in the world at this current time and she just wanted to tell the truth."

Colvin secured a number of journalism awards during her career, including foreign reporter of the year at the British Press Awards.

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