The French judiciary is investigating the 2012 deaths of reporters in Syria as a possible crime against humanity, anti-terror prosecutors told AFP on Tuesday.

Prominent US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed by an explosion in the east of the war-torn country in what a US court later ruled was an "unconscionable" attack that targeted journalists on the orders of the Syrian government.

The French judiciary had been treating the alleged attack as a potential war crime, but on December 17 widened the investigation to a possible crime against humanity, a charge for which French courts claim universal jurisdiction regardless of locations or nationalities involved.

The anti-terror prosecutors' office told AFP that new evidence pointed to "the execution of a concerted plan against a group of civilians, including journalists, activists and defenders of human rights, as part of a wide-ranging or systematic attack".

Colvin -- a renowned war........

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