Red Cross begins Homs evacuation

The Red Cross has begun evacuating wounded women and children from Homs after three weeks of intense shelling by government forces.

Twenty people were evacuated from the Baba Amr neighbourhood last night. Syrian Arab Red Crescent ambulances moved in after negotiations with government forces earlier in the day.

At least two foreign reporters were wounded in a rocket attack that hit Baba Amr earlier this week. The French journalist Edith Bouvier, who suffered a broken leg in the attack, made an appeal by video for a humanitarian corridor to be opened so that she could be evacuated to receive medical treatment. Also stranded in the city is the British photographer Paul Conroy, who suffered minor injuries. A Red Cross spokesman Hicham Hassan said the Syrian Red Crescent evacuated people to the city's al-Amin hospital. It is thought that the foreign journalists were not among those who left.