Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Credit Dario Lopez Mills

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is an NPR international correspondent.

From her base in Israel, Garcia-Navarro reports on stories happening throughout the Middle East. She was one of the first reporters to enter Libya after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising began and spent months painting a deep and vivid portrait of a country at war. Often at great personal risk, Garcia-Navarro captured history in the making with stunning insight, courage and humanity.

For her work covering the Arab Spring, Garcia-Navarro was awarded a 2011 George Foster Peabody Award, a Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club, and an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Alliance for Women and the Media's Gracie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement.

Before her assignment to Jerusalem began in 2009, Garcia-Navarro served for more than a year as NPR News' Baghdad Bureau Chief and before that three years as NPR's foreign correspondent in Mexico City, reporting from that region as well as on special assignments abroad.

Garcia-Navarro got her start in journalism as a freelancer with the BBC World Service and Voice of America, reporting from Cuba, Syria, Panama and Europe. She later became a producer for Associated Press Television News before transitioning to AP Radio. While there, Garcia-Navarro covered post-Sept. 11 events in Afghanistan and developments in Jerusalem. In 2002, she began a two-year reporting stint based in Iraq.

In addition to the Murrow award, Garcia-Navarro was honored with the 2006 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize for a two-part series "Migrants' Job Search Empties Mexican Community." She contributed to NPR News reporting on Iraq, which was recognized with a 2005 Peabody Award and a 2007 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton.

Garcia-Navarro holds a Bachelor of Science degree in International Relations from Georgetown University and an Master of Arts degree in journalism from City University in London.

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Middle East
3:52 pm
Wed October 26, 2011

Libyans Say NATO's Bomb Sometimes Hit Civilians

Credit Dario Lopez-Mills / AP

On an Aug. 10 tour organized by Moammar Gadhafi's governement, an unidentified man lies in a hospital bed in Tripoli. He was allegedly injured during NATO airstrikes a day earlier.

NATO's role in Libya was crucial to the rebellion that toppled Moammar Gadhafi, but that assistance came at a cost, according to some Libyans.

Mohammed Abueishi lives in the Souq al-Juma neighborhood of Tripoli, near an apartment building on a quiet residential street that was hit by a NATO airstrike a little after 1 a.m. on June 19.

"I was sleeping and suddenly there was an enormous blast and all the doors and the windows burst open. There was a huge amount of dust in the house," he said. "I stumbled out to find my uncle's house destroyed."

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Africa
2:00 am
Mon October 24, 2011

After Liberation, Challenges Ahead For Libya

Libya's liberation was declared over the weekend, and residents of Sirte, Moammar Gadhafi's battered hometown, are beginning to return to their homes.

Middle East
6:00 am
Sun October 23, 2011

Future Uncertain On Libya's Day Of 'Liberation'

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, host: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.

It's an historic day in Libya. The country's new leaders are set to declare their country liberated. An interim government will soon be sworn in and Libyans are hoping to have elections in eight months. But the road ahead won't be easy. In Misrata, Moammar Gadhafi's body has been left on display. Libyans who went to see his corpse yesterday had their own thoughts on what lies ahead and what the former dictator's death means to them.

NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is in Misrata.

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Africa
10:01 pm
Sun October 16, 2011

Misrata Militia Restricts Who May Enter Libyan City

Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi terrorized the Libyan city of Misrata during the civil war. Because it never fell, the city became an icon of the revolution.

But Misrata is gaining a reputation for a militia that is carrying out acts of vengeance, looting and restricting movements in and out of the city.

At a checkpoint 20 miles outside of Misrata, dozens of cars are parked in the hot sun waiting for permission to enter the city. But most are being turned away.

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Africa
1:00 pm
Thu October 13, 2011

In Gadhafi's Birthplace, Loyalists Find Shaky Refuge

Many civilians have fled the fighting in the besieged Libyan city of Sirte in recent days and have ended up in a nearby village, which has one distinction: It's where deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was born. But Sirte residents are not the only ones finding shelter there.

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