The Foreign Ministry said on Friday it was following up reports on the drowning of a number of Egyptian fishermen off the Libyan coasts.
In a statement, the ministry said the Egyptian ambassador to Libya, now in Egypt due to unstable security conditions in Libya, was maintaining contacts with Libyan authorities and senior figures at Libyan tribes to get reliable information on the issue.
Available information indicated that three fishermen died and eight other went missing, while four were rescued and now held by a Libyan prosecution office east of Tripoli, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Contacts continued to help release the four fishermen, according to the spokesman, who renewed the ministry's warnings about illegal fishing in the waters of other countries, especially neighboring Libya.
Libya has two rival parliaments and governments, with Tripoli controlled by Libya Dawn forces that seized the capital last year, forcing the internationally recognized government to operate out of Tobruk, in the northeast of the country.
