Islamic State militants have slit the throats of five journalists working for a Libyan TV station in the eastern part of the country, an army commander said on Monday. Reuters reports that the reporters had been missing since August, when they left the eastern city of Tobruk after covering the inauguration of the country's elected parliament to travel to Benghazi. Their route took them through Derna, a militant Islamist hotspot. As stated by Faraj al-Barassi, a district army commander in eastern Libya, militants loyal to Islamic State were responsible for killing the journalists, whose bodies were found outside the eastern city of Bayda. "Five bodies with slit throats were found today in the Green Mountain forests," Barrasi told said, referring to a sparsely populated area east of Benghazi. He did not say when the five journalists were believed to have been killed. The reportersfour Libyans and one Egyptianhad been working for Barqa TV, an eastern television supporting federalism for eastern Libya, other journalists stated. Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), a group promoting press freedom, said the reporters had been kidnapped at an Islamic State checkpoint and were killed recently. "We are deeply shocked by this brutal slaughter," said IFJ president Jim Boumelh. "ISIS (Islamic State) aims to horrify but we can only feel great sorrow and further resolve to see the killers held responsible for their crimes."
