It turns out that the four journalists, who were reported missing on April 7, were captured near Brega on 5 April by pro-Gaddafi forces, who are presumed to be still holding them. Their current location is not known.

The four journalists are Clare Morgana Gillis, a US freelancer who is covering events in the east of the country for The Atlantic magazine’s website and other US media, James Foley, a US reporter working for GlobalPost.com, Stars and Stripes and Al-Jazeera, Manu Brabo, a Spanish freelance photographer, and Anton Hammerl, a South African freelance photographer.

According to The Atlantic’s website, rebels saw pro-Gaddafi troops destroy their vehicle, release their driver and take them away.

Their arrests bring the number of journalists currently held in Libya to nine. Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all of them.

Two Komsomolskaya Pravda reporters, Dmitry Steshin and Aleksandr Kots, were abducted yesterday near Adjabiya. They managed to phone their newspaper to report that gunmen had intercepted their vehicle and were taking them in an unknown direction.

Komsomolskaya Pravda deputy editor Andrei Dyatlov told Reporters Without Borders: “Steshin and Kots are experienced journalists who have covered a lot of wars, including Chechnya and Abkhazia (…) This is their third trip to Libya since the start of the war there. Nonetheless, we are very worried. This concerns not just our newspaper but all the international media, as abductions are becoming more frequent.”

A number of cameramen working for the Russian television station NTV were reportedly kidnapped at the same time as the two Komsomolskaya Pravda journalists. An NTV representative told Reporters Without Borders they were subsequently released.

Microsoft reported in an April 7 statement that its representative in Libya, Khalid El-Hasumi, was arrested by the authorities in Tripoli on 19 March. Hasumi began working for Microsoft last year.