Lara Logan breaks silence on sexual assault in Egypt

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan has given her first interview since the sexual assault she suffered on Feb. 11 while covering the revolution in Egypt.

"For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands," Logan told The New York Times' Brian Stelter as she described the trauma of the 40-minute attack. Logan estimates that she was assaulted by as many as 300 men, who were among the crowd in Tahrir Square exulting over the ouster of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. As Stetler writes, she provided an account of how her assailants "tore at her clothes and groped and beat her body."

Logan was in Cairo covering the celebrations for "60 Minutes." During the chaos sparked by the announcement of Mubarak's resignation, the veteran foreign reporter—who, like many journalists there, had already been detained and roughed up by Egyptian police earlier in the uprising—was separated from her producer and crew. "There was a moment that everything went wrong," she said—describing the point at which a mob began to gather around her. Logan and CBS decided several days later to go public about the incident, a grim account that stood out in stark contrast to Egypt's otherwise jubilant celebration of the Arab Spring.

"The physical wounds heal," Logan said. "You don't carry around the evidence the way you would if you had lost your leg or your arm in Afghanistan . . . . What really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence." You can read more about her harrowing account over at The New York Times.

"60 Minutes" will air an interview with Logan on Sunday night.

(Photo of Logan moments before the attack, courtesy of CBS News)