French judicial authorities have issued arrest warrants for former Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad, along with six former senior officials, over the 2012 killing of journalists in Homs, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has said.

"Investigating judges of the French War Crimes Unit have issued arrest warrants for seven former senior Syrian officials, including fallen president Bashar al Assad," FIDH wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

Assad and six other officials are accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity targeting French and international journalists Remi Ochlik, Edith Bouvier, Marie Colvin, and Paul Conroy, as well as interpreter Wael al Oma who were killed or wounded in the attack on an informal press centre in Homs, Syria in 2012.

"The issuance of these seven arrest warrants is a decisive step that paves the way for a trial in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al Assad’s regime against Remi Ochlik and his fellow journalists who were in the informal press centre in Bab Amr in February 2012," said Clemence Bectarte, lawyer for the FIDH.

'Explicit intention to target foreign journalists'

Mazen Darwish, a lawyer and the director general of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), also said that the judicial investigation established that the attack on the press centre was part of the "Syrian regime’s explicit intention to target foreign journalists in order to limit media coverage of its crimes and force them to leave the city and the country."

FIDH added that French authorities have issued 21 arrest warrants for senior Syrian officials to date, with three for Assad.

In December, Assad, who had been Syria’s leader for nearly 25 years, fled to Russia, bringing an end to the Ba'ath Party regime, which had been in power since 1963.