Italy said tonight that four Italian journalists have been abducted in Libya, and their driver killed.
The news came as journalists trapped inside a hotel in Tripoli by pro-Gaddafi forces were freed.
About 35 journalists had been under siege inside the Rixos Hotel since August 21 according to Reporters Without Borders.
Due to the concentration of loyalist forces in the building the hotel had become a target for the rebels, and was reportedly under heavy fire for much of the day.
However, the journalists now report that the loyalist fighters have left and they have been freed by the Red Cross.
Matthew Chance, a reporter for CNN who was trapped in the hotel, said via Twitter that the crisis was over. Chance said that the journalists were "weeping with relief" as they drove away from the hotel.
Earlier, in an attempt to send a message to those attacking the hotel, the journalists hung sheets outside the windows with the words "television, press, don’t shoot" written on them. All wore bullet-proof vests. Pictures of journalists holed up at the hotel also emerged on the internet.
The BBC's Matthew Price had spoken to Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday, describing a "desperate situation" developing in the hotel.
After the siege was lifted he told the BBC that the guards had believed that had the journalists left the hotel they would have been killed. He said that the Tripoli the journalists found once they left the hotel was "completely different" to the one they had known before.
UPDATE: An earlier version of this report suggested an ITN cameraman had been threatened at gunpoint in the Rixos hotel. ITN have checked these reports and have no reason to believe this was the case.