On 27 November last year, a young, ambitious woman sent an email to her boss. It contained a single link, to a piece by the BBC correspondent Paul Wood. Wood had been smuggled into the Syrian city of Homs. His subsequent report gave a vivid account of the smouldering rebellion there, crushed two months later in a remorseless government attack.

Bashar al-Assad took advice from Iran on how to handle the uprising against his rule, according to a cache of what appear to be several thousand emails received and sent by the Syrian leader and his wife. The Syrian leader was also briefed in detail about the presence of western journalists in the Baba Amr district of Homs and urged to "tighten the security grip" on the opposition-held city in November.

Paul Conroy, who worked for the Sunday Times, was carried on a stretcher to the safety of neighbouring Lebanon. He had suffered leg injuries during the bombardment that killed his colleague, Marie Colvin, and a French photographer, Remi Ochlik, in Homs last Wednesday. After spending five days trapped in the district of Baba Amr, Mr Conroy, 47, left the city on Sunday night with the aid of Syrian opposition activists. He had been confined alongside Edith Bouvier, a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Figaro - who was also suffering from leg injuries inflicted during the same attack - and two other journalists, Javier Espinosa and William Daniels.

Syrian security forces shelled the central city of Homs on Wednesday, the 19th day of a bombardment that activists say has claimed the lives of hundreds of trapped civilians in one of the deadliest campaigns in nearly a year of violent repression by the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian authorities have charged a US-born Syrian blogger with trying to incite sectarian strife, and the regime has fired on a funeral procession, according to activists. The reported events come at the end of a day in which at least 28 people were killed in the country. Razan Ghazzawi is the latest among dozens of activists, journalists and bloggers who have been detained since the revolt against President Bashar Assad began nine months ago, triggering a brutal crackdown that the UN estimates has killed more than 5,000 people and put thousands into prison.