Egypt

Six Egyptian workers kidnapped en route home from Libya: Foreign Ministry

The Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that it is looking into the kidnapping in Libya of six Egyptian workers as they made their way back to Egypt.

"Information available about the incident as yet indicates that the six Egyptians were kidnapped in the city of Bani Walid by an armed group that interjected their path, stopped their car and took them to an unknown location," the Foreign Minister's Assistant for Consular Affairs said in a statement.

The six Egyptians were working in the Libyan capital Tripoli, according to the statement.

The foreign ministry and the Egyptian consulate in Libya are currently "exerting all necessary efforts" to discern the safety of the kidnapped and manage their release, the assistant minister added.

On June 20, seven Egyptian nationals were detained in the city of Misrata in Libya. The detained Egyptians were on their way back to Egypt when they were stopped in Misrata.

The Foreign Ministry renewed on Tuesday its warning against travel to Libyan territories.

Violence has intensified in Libya particularly since 2014, when conflicting parties sought to take control of the country.

Thousands of Egyptians have been forced to leave their jobs and return to Egypt amid a turbulent environment of armed conflict in Libya.

In February 2015, Islamic State fighters in Libya abducted and beheaded 20 Egyptian nationals in the city of Sirte, releasing a video of the beheading afterwards.

In response, Egypt launched airstrikes in Libya in the same week of the video's release. The Egyptian military said in a statement the strikes targeted training sites and weapons and ammunition storage sites belonging to ISIS fighters in the country.

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