Logan Assaulted in Cairo; Obama Phones

The New York Times reports Lara Logan, the CBS News correspondent, was attacked and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo on February 11, the day that the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced from power, the network said Tuesday.

After the mob surrounded her, Ms. Logan “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,” the network said in a statement. Logan is recovering at a hospital in the United States.

The evening of the attack, Logan, 39, the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, was covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square in central Cairo with a camera crew and an unknown number of security staff members. The CBS team was enveloped by “a dangerous element” within the crowd, CBS said, that numbered more than 200 people. That mob separated Logan from her team and then attacked her.

Once she was rescued, CBS said she “reconnected” with the team and returned to the United States on February 12.

The CBS statement mentioned nothing more about the attackers. It also said that there would be “no further comment from CBS News, and correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.”

A day after CBS revealed that Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted while on assignment in Egypt last week, President Barack Obama called the war correspondent to express his condolences, a White House official confirmed to TheWrap.

Logan was released from a hospital on Tuesday night and is now with her family recovering.

Read her accounting of her experience in Cairo on Esquire >>