Japanese reporter killed in Syria

A female Japanese reporter has been killed after being caught in gunfire in the north Syrian city of Aleppo, Japan's foreign ministry says.

The US has warned Syria over the use of chemical weapons, as fighting raged across the country.

The death of 45-year-old Mika Yamamoto takes to four the number of foreign journalists who have lost their lives in the country since the uprising began against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Japan's foreign ministry says Yamamoto was working for the small Japan Press news agency, adding that a colleague travelling with her identified the body.

Yamamoto joined Japan Press in 1995 and had also covered the war in Afghanistan and the Iraq conflict, according to the company's website.

Yamamoto was a known face on Japanese television who came to prominence after she survived air raids on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in 2003, in which two journalists from Reuters and a Spanish broadcaster were killed.

The dead woman's father, retired journalist Koji Yamamoto, said reports of her death were "too much to bear".