Terrorists affiliated to the Islamic State organization, ISIS, have killed five reporters working with a Libyan TV station.
The journalists who had their throats slit had been declared missing since last year August.
Their bloodied bodies were left outside the eastern city of Bayda.
The journalists had left Tobruk, eastern Libya after covering the inauguration of the country’s elected parliament and had traveled down to Bengazi. It was on their way through, Derna, a militant flashpoint, that they were captured.
Faraj al-Barassi, a district army commander in eastern Libya, said militants connected to the ISIS group were responsible for the killing of the journalists.
“Five bodies with slit throats were found today in the Green Mountain forests,” Barrasi told Reuters, referring to a sparsely populated area east of Benghazi.
He did not however say the actual time the journalists were killed.
The reporters, four Libyans and one Egyptian are members of staff of Barqa TV, an eastern television which allegedly supports federalism for eastern Libya.
Meanwhile, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said the reporters had been kidnapped at an Islamic State checkpoint and were killed recently.
“We are deeply shocked by this brutal slaughter. ISIS aims to horrify but we can only feel great sorrow and further resolve to see the killers held responsible for their crimes,” IFJ president Jim Boumelha said in a statement.
The terror group has been based in the east of the war ravaged nation since losing control of the capital Tripoli in August to another terrorist faction, which has set up its own administration.