CBS: Lara Logan recovering after being sexually assaulted in Egypt

CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan is recovering in a U.S. hospital from a sexual attack she suffered last Friday while covering the celebration in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the network said Tuesday.

CBS said Logan was producing a story for "60 Minutes" when her reporting team and security detail "were surrounded by a dangerous element," a mob composed of "more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy."

She was separated from her comrades, the network said, and then repeatedly sexually assaulted and beaten before a group of women and Egyptian solders came to her rescue. She was later taken back to her hotel and returned Saturday to the United States.

"Lara is as savvy as they come and works for a well-resourced news organization, but the problem was the mob, and when you're separated from your crew, that's generally when women are assaulted on the job," said Judith Matloff, an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and board member of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma and the International News Safety Institute in London.

Matloff said assaults on female foreign correspondents - who are sometimes targeted "because they are in a culture that may view them as Western and as being easy targets" - are not uncommon, and that many such attacks often go unreported.

Logan, 39, joined CBS News in 2002 and has reported extensively from war zones, including Afghanistan and Iraq. Citing her privacy, CBS declined further comment on the attack.

Paul Steiger, chairman of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, of which Logan is a board member, said in a statement Tuesday night, "We have seen Lara's compassion at work while helping journalists who have faced brutal aggression while doing their jobs. She is a brilliant, courageous and committed reporter. Our thoughts are with Lara as she recovers."

CPJ counted over 140 attacks on journalists by mercenaries and government-backed mobs in Cairo last week - including CNN's Anderson Cooper and an Egyptian journalist who was shot and killed. Logan herself had been detained earlier in the week by Egyptian police outside Cairo's Israeli embassy, blindfolded and held overnight along with crew members.

Logan, who had been filing reports from Egypt since Jan. 31, later told Esquire's "The Politics Blog" in a post dated last Friday, "There's no doubt in my mind that the situation we were caught in before, we are now arriving into again."

Logan, a native of South Africa, reports for the "CBS Evening News" as well as "60 Minutes," where she has been a correspondent since 2006.