A narrow escape from Syria
A French journalist came very close to death's door on her way out of Syria:
PARIS - Wounded French journalist Edith Bouvier feared her attempt to escape from Homs had ended inside a dark, 3-km tunnel that rebels were using to supply the besieged Baba Amro district when the Syrian army bombarded its exit.That was very close, and dangerous. She's lucky.
Her leg broken by a shell which killed two foreign journalists days earlier, Bouvier was abandoned, taped to a makeshift stretcher, as rebels and dozens of wounded fled the reverberations of explosions and headed back to the shattered neighborhood.
"One of them placed his Kalashnikov on me. He put his hand on my head and said a prayer. It wasn't very reassuring. Then he left," Bouvier told Le Figaro newspaper, for which she was working in Syria.
"I didn't know what was going to happen. Was the exit blocked? Were Syrian soldiers going to enter? I wanted to run away before remembering that I was taped to a stretcher."
Bouvier and French photographer William Daniels, who stayed with her throughout, were finally rescued by a rebel who drove down the 1.6-metre (5.3 feet) high tunnel on a motorbike and carried them back to Baba Amro.
