A team of reporters from Sky News Arabia has gone missing in the contested city of Aleppo in northern Syria, the Abu Dhabi-based channel said Thursday.
Sky News Arabia said it lost contact on Tuesday morning with reporter Ishak Moctar, a Mauritanian national, cameraman Samir Kassab, a Lebanese national, as well as their Syrian driver whose name is being withheld at his family's request.
Sky News Arabia chief Nart Bouran said the crew was on assignment primarily to focus on the humanitarian aspects of the conflict in Aleppo. The channel appealed for any information on the team's whereabouts and for help to ensure the journalists' safe return.
France's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that two more French journalists were being held hostage in Syria, taking the number of its captive citizens in the country to four.
The two men, Nicolas Henin, who was working for Le Point magazine, and Pierre Torres, who was reporting for French-German television channel Arte, were taken on June 22, but their disappearance had not previously been made public.
Two other journalists, veteran war correspondent Didier Francois and photographer Edouard Elias, were abducted in early June on their way to Aleppo.
Sky News Arabia said it was in contact with the journalists' families to update them on the latest developments and efforts to reach them.
Georges Kassab, the brother of missing Lebanese national Samir Kassab, stressed in a phone call with
LBCI's
Nharkom Said TV Show that they have lost contacts with the missing crew
since dawn Tuesday, noting that their whereabouts remain unknown.
"They went missing in the
Aleppo countryside," Kassab added.
Syria is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists says, with at least 39 killed and 21 kidnapped in 2012 by both rebels and government forces.
Most kidnapped journalists have been released, but several remain missing.
REUTERS/AP/LBCI
To watch the full LBCI report, please click on the video above.
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