Four Italian journalists, abducted on Wednesday in Libya, are being kept in apartments in the southern suburbs of Tripoli, Italy's Consul in Benghazi Guido De Sanctis said.
Two correspondents from the Corriere della Sera newspaper, Elisabetta Rosaspina and Guiseppe Sarcina, along with Domenico Quirico, a correspondent from the La Stampa daily, and Claudio Monici, a correspondent from the Avvenire newspaper, were abducted by armed men some 80 km (some 50 miles) from the Libyan capital.
"The four journalists are in apartments in Tripoli between the Bab al-Azizia district and the Rixos hotel," De Sanctis was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera website.
According to Italian media, a car carrying the journalists was stopped by an armed gang on Wednesday. They killed the driver, robbed the journalists and then handed them over to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's supporters.
One of the journalists, Claudio Monici, managed to get in touch later with his newspaper and describe what had happened to them.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressed hope that the journalists would be rescued as soon as possible.
