CBS' Lara Logan suffers 'brutal' beating in Egypt

A CBS News reporter was savagely beaten and sexually assaulted while covering the uprising in Egypt on Friday – just as Egyptians celebrated President Hosni Mubarak’s historic fall from power, the station said in a statement Tuesday.

As the world watched the revelry in Tahrir Square, a mob of more than 200 people surrounded chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan, her “60 Minutes” crew and their security, according to CBS, describing the mob as “whipped into a frenzy.”

After Logan, 39, was separated from her team, she suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,” CBS said.

She was reunited with her crew, returned to her hotel and flew back to the U.S. the next morning. She remained in a hospital yesterday, and CBS and Logan declined further comment.

Logan isn’t the only reporter who has been assaulted while covering the massive protests in Egypt; the Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 140 reporters have been attacked or killed there.

Logan, a South African native, has experience in war zones, covering both Afghanistan and Iraq.

On Feb. 2, she and her crew were detained by the Egyptian military for a day before returning to the U.S.

“Fundamentally, it’s in my blood to be there and to be on the street and listening to people and to do the best reporting that I can,” Logan said in an interview on “The Charlie Rose” show a few days after she was released. She returned to the country shortly before Mubarak resigned.