TRIPOLI, Libya, April 15 (UPI) -- Three of five journalists missing in Libya since early April have been spotted in eastern Libya, witnesses said.
Among them is freelance writer Clare Morgana Gillis, who disappeared April 5 along with two other journalists covering the civil war in Libya, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Human Rights Watch said it was told that witnesses saw the three in a government detention camp in Tripoli, but the location of two other missing journalists, South African news photographer Anton Lazarus Hammerl and American freelance writer Matthew VanDyke, missing since mid-March, are unknown.
Gillis, 34, of New Haven, Conn., was writing for USA Today and Atlantic magazine.
"We're really concerned," Atlantic editor James Bennet said Thursday. "We're hoping they're released soon, but there hasn't been an update for two days."
The U.S. State Department is trying to arrange for the detained journalists' release.
"We're very aware of this issue and I know the State Department is working very hard in order to do what it can to facilitate those journalists' release," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a USA Today report.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said there have been more than 500 attacks on reporters since the unrest in northern Africa began to spread in late December. Nine journalists have been killed in the region.
Four New York Times journalists were detained and beaten by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi in March. They were held for six days before being released.
