Reporter shot twice in leg in Syria to prevent escape

A reporter for the London Times has been shot and a photographer badly beaten after they were double-crossed and kidnapped by rebel fighters in Syria, the paper reported tonight.

Anthony Loyd was shot twice in the leg, while photographer Jack Hill was assaulted after he tried to escape from their captors in Tall Rifat, near the Turkish border.

They had been attempting to return to Turkey with a local fixer and bodyguards after a three-day assignment in the ruined city of Aleppo when their car was forced off the road, the newspaper said.

Mr Loyd was foreign reporter of the year at the 2014 UK Press Awards, while Mr Hill was honoured by the UK Picture Editor’s Guild for his Syrian images last year.

The paper said they identified their captors as men charged with providing them with safe passage to the border.

After the fixer and Mr Hill tried to escape, Mr Loyd was shot to prevent him trying to do the same.

The paper said that they were released after the Islamic Front, an anti-extremist rebel group, confronted the gang.

After Mr Loyd was treated in a local hospital the two reporters and their fixer made it across the border to Turkey.