Basil al-Sayed, Syria Journalist, Dead At Age 24

A 24-year-old journalist reportedly has been killed in Syria.

The video below purportedly shows Basil al-Sayed's mother and relatives grieving before zipping up his body bag. According to Ahmed Al Omran at NPR, al-Sayed had recorded hundreds of hours of footage of unrest in Syria using a small red camcorder to chronicle the situation.

NPR posted the last video filmed by the young journalist before he was reportedly shot in the head by security forces firing directly at protesters.

In Syria's restive city of Homs, nearly daily protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime have been met with a brutal crackdown.

According to a CNN correspondent, government snipers patrol Homs "picking off their victims apparently indiscriminately and at will."

Arab League monitors arrived in Homs -- the country's third-largest city and center of Syria's uprising -- this week to assess whether the Assad regime is cooperating with the president's promise to withdraw heavy weaponry from the streets.

Foreign journalists are largely banned from Syria, and the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented at least 29 cases of journalists arrested for their reporting. Citizen journalism has sprung up as a result, with locals uploading amateur videos of protests and government forces opening fire to the Internet. Groups estimate that over 5,000 people have been killed since protests began in March.