French President Nicolas Sarkozy described the deaths of the two journalists, French photographer Remi Ochlik and American Marie Colvin of Britain's Sunday Times, as an assassination, and said the Assad era had to end.

"That's enough now," Sarkozy said. "This regime must go, and there is no reason that Syrians don't have the right to live their lives and choose their destiny freely."

France and Britain demanded that three other Western journalists wounded in the strike on a house in Homs be given urgent medical care.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said a Syrian army cease-fire to give rapid access to humanitarian aid was "imperative", adding that the Syrian government's response to the attacks on the journalists was insufficient.

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