AFP, Getty Images journalists arrested by the Libyan army

[News_Editor]

AFP, Getty Images journalists arrested by the Libyan army

2011-03-23 03:38:06 GMT+7 (ICT)

PARIS (BNO NEWS) -- The two correspondents working for the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency who were reported missing last week have been arrested by the Libyan army, the news agency said on Tuesday. A photographer working for Getty Images was also arrested.

AFP said in a statement on Tuesday that the Libyan driver of AFP journalists Dave Clark, 38, and Roberto Schmidt, 45, said they were arrested by Libyan soldiers on Saturday afternoon when they were near the city of Ajdabiya.

Clark and Schmidt were accompanied by Joe Raedle, a photographer working for the Getty Images agency, when they went missing. The three journalists have not been heard of since sending an email to senior editors on Friday evening in which they said they planned to travel to a region near Tobruk on Saturday in an attempt to meet opponents of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. They also planned to speak to refugees fleeing the civil war.

"They were unharmed and taken to an unknown destination," AFP said in a statement on Tuesday. "The agency has had no news of Dave Clark, Roberto Schmidt and Getty correspondent Joe Raedle since Saturday. The management has been making every effort to ensure their immediate release."

AFP said Clark is based at AFP headquarters in Paris and has been reporting from Libya since March 8. Schmidt, a photographer in the Nairobi bureau, has been in eastern Libya since February 28.

Libya is currently in the midst of a civil war which has so far claimed at least 1,000 and as many as 10,000 lives. The Libyan government has previously compared Western journalists to al-Qaeda supporters and said they could not guarantee their safety.

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