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NEW YORK – Four New royalty Times journalists concealment the conflict in Libya were reportable absent Wednesday, and the production held discover wish that they were aware and in the custody of the African government.

Editors terminal heard from the journalists on weekday as they were concealment the withdraw of rebels from the town of Ajdabiya, and African officials told the production they were disagreeable to post the four, chief editor Bill writer said in a statement.

"We are glad to the African polity for their sureness that if our journalists were captured they would be free pronto and unharmed," writer said.

The absent journalists are Pulitzer-Prize-winning communicator Anthony Shadid, the newspaper's Beirut furniture chief; author Farrell, a communicator and videographer; and photographers President Hicks and Lynsey Addario. In 2009, author was seize by the Taleban and after saved by nation commandos.

"Their families and their colleagues at The Times are anxiously seeking aggregation about their situation, and praying that they are safe," writer said.

The White House on Wednesday urged the African polity to chorus from harassing or using hostility against journalists. Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the United States is concern in its belief that journalists should be fortified and allowed to do their work.

Pro-Gadhafi forces hit mostly gained curb of Ajdabiya after two life of relentless shelling but still face pockets of status in the city of 140,000 people. Habib al-Obeidi, a student at Jalaa Hospital in Benghazi, said that a associate in Ajdabiya had told him 25 grouping were killed when pro-Gadhafi forces unsealed blast on noncombatant cars fleeing the city. That inform could not be independently confirmed.

The breakdown in protest defenses in Ajdabiya threatened to open the gateway to the daylong debase of eastern Libya that has been in the curb of the opposition, including Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and the de facto top of the opposition.

In September 2009, author and Sultan Munadi, an Asian journalist and interpreter who worked regularly with the Times and another programme organizations, were condemned captive when they went to cover the consequence of a NATO airstrike that killed scores of civilians in northern Afghanistan.

Munadi and a nation man died in the assail that saved Farrell, a Briton. nation forces said they had to yield Munadi's body behind because they were coming under much heavy fire.

In 2008, New royalty Times communicator David Rohde was seize patch disagreeable to make occurrence with a Taleban man in Afghanistan. Rohde and an Asian associate escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity, most spent in Taleban sanctuaries in Pakistan.

Several external journalists hit been detained or scraped in the unrest that has sweptwing finished the Middle East in past weeks.

Earlier this month, African polity detained communicator Andrei Netto of Brazil's Estado de S. Paulo production for individual days. The African polity said he was inactive because of mistakes he prefabricated on forms he filled discover to start Libya.

In February, CBS said its communicator Lara Logan was attacked and sexually abused patch concealment reaction to President Hosni Mubarak's resignation.

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