Four journalists for The New York Times are missing in Libya, the newspaper said Wednesday on its website.
Editors at the paper said they had last been in touch with the four on Tuesday, the paper reported. They said they received second-hand information that some of its reporting team “had been swept up by Libyan government forces” in the port city of Ajdabiya, where a battle raged Wednesday between government troops and rebels.
The Times has not been able to confirm those reports, Bill Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, said on the newspaper’s website.
“We have talked with officials of the Libyan government in Tripoli, and they tell us they are attempting to ascertain the whereabouts of our journalists,” he said. “We are grateful to the Libyan government for their assurance that if our journalists were captured they would be released promptly and unharmed.”
The paper identified the journalists as Anthony Shadid, its bureau chief in Beirut, Lebanon, and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for foreign reporting; Stephen Farrell, a reporter and videographer who was kidnapped by the Taliban and rescued by British commandos in 2009 and Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, photographers who have covered the Middle East and Africa.
