A French freelance photographer working in Syria has died after being hit by shrapnel while covering an opposition group for Reporters Without Borders, the French government said yesterday.
Olivier Voisin was following the operations of an armed opposition group near Idlib, in northwestern Syria, Reporters Without Borders said.
Voisin, born in 1974, was taken to the international hospital in the Turkish border city of Antakya but subsequently died from wounds to his head and arm, the office of French president François Hollande said.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels have captured the site of a suspected nuclear reactor near the Euphrates river that Israeli warplanes destroyed six years ago, opposition sources in eastern Syria said yesterday.
Al-Kubar site, about 60km (35 miles) west of the city of Deir al-Zor, became a focus of attention when Israel raided it in 2007. The US said the complex was a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor geared to making weapons-grade plutonium.
Omar Abu Laila a spokesman for the Eastern Joint Command of the Free Syrian Army said the only building rebels found at the site was a hangar containing at least one Scud missile. – (Reuters)