NY Times’ Foreign Correspondent & Pulitzer Prize Winner Anthony Shadid suffered Sudden Death

New York Times’ forign correspondent and  a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Shadid died in eastern Syria on 16 February 2012 after having suffered a severe asthma attack. Anthony Shadid had worked for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Associated Press and covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict and turmoil.

At the time of his death, Shadid was on a reporting inside Syria, gathering information on the Free Syrian Army and other armed elements of the resistance against President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces were engaged in a repression of the Opposition. The Syrian government, which tightly controls foreign journalists’ activities, had not been informed of his assignment by The Times
A Lebanese American, Shadid  was born on 26 September 1968, in Oklahoma City. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism, the Times reported. He was stationed in Cairo for The Associated Press beginning in 1995. In 2001, he began working for the Globe and rose to prominence following his reporting of the 11 Septemberterrorist attacks. He moved to the Post in 2003 and to the Times in 2009.

He had been shot in the West Bank in 2002, abducted in Libya and chased countless times. He was among four New York Times journalists held captive in Libya and abused by Moammar Khadafy’s forces. In 2003, Shadid reported for The Washington Post from the streets of Baghdad amidst raining bombs capturing the death and grief of ordinary people. In 2002, while on assignment for the Globe in the West Bank city of Ramallah, he was walking away from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s compound with his colleague Sa’id Ghazali when he was a bullet in the shoulder.

His authored three books. His first book Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War was published in 2005. He also wrote -House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East.

Shadid won two Pulitzer Prizes twice in 2004 and 2010, for his coverage of Iraq for the Washington Post. Shadid’s other journalism honors included a George Polk Award in 2003.