Three Spain journalists missing in Syria

Madrid

Three Spanish freelance journalists have gone missing in Syria where they were reporting from the northwestern Aleppo region, the head of a Spanish press federation said on Tuesday.

Jose Manuel Lopez, Antonio Pampliega and Angel Sastre entered Syria via southern Turkey on July 10 "and there has been no news of them since July 12", said Elsa Gonzalez, president of the Federation of Press Associations of Spain.

"In that region there is intense fighting going on, so there is cause for concern," she said, but added: "For the moment we can only call it a disappearance."

Gonzalez did not know whether the three were working together, though Spanish national television station TVE said they were doing a joint investigative report.

Gonzalez said she was informed of the situation by Spanish government officials.

"They cannot yet conclude that they have been kidnapped," she said. The journalists' families called for "respect" and "the greatest possible discretion" in the case, in a statement quoted by various Spanish media.

A source in the Spanish foreign ministry told AFP: "We are aware of the situation and we are working on it."

The three journalists had worked recently for various media including Spanish newspapers La Razon and ABC, which was the first on Tuesday to report their disappearance.

Pampliega, a freelance war journalist born in 1982, contributed to AFP's text coverage of the civil war in Syria for a period up to 2013. He has also worked in countries such as Afghanistan, Irak, and Pakistan.

Lopez, born in 1971, is a prize-winning photographer who contributed images to AFP from several war zones, including from the Syrian conflict up until 2013.

According to data on the website of the Madrid Press Association, Sastre, 35, has worked in various trouble spots around the world for Spanish television, radio and press.