Three Spanish reporters missing in war-torn Aleppo in Syria

Three Spanish freelance journalists who traveled to Syria to report amid the country's long-running civil war have gone missing around the embattled northern city of Aleppo, a Spanish journalism association said July 21, the latest ensnared in the world's most dangerous assignment for reporters.

The disappearance of Antonio Pampliega, Jose Manuel Lopez and Angel Sastre, presumed to be working together, comes as most media organizations have pulled out of Syria, especially with the rise of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. At least 84 journalists have been killed since 2011 in Syria, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, while others remain missing or have been released for ransom.
     
Elsa Gonzalez, the president of the Spanish journalism association, told Spanish National Television that the three disappeared while working in the Aleppo area. She said they entered Syria from Turkey on July 10.
     
A statement from their families said the men had been missing since July 13.
     
"An effort has been underway since then to search and locate them," the families said.
     
Sastre, a television journalist, last posted on Twitter July 10, when he wrote "courage" in Arabic, English and Spanish. Pampliega worked as a freelance reporter and his most recent work was from a trip to Syria earlier this year. It featured a story about Spaniards fighting with Kurds in Kobani against the ISIL group. Spanish media identified Lopez as a photojournalist.
     
Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said late July 21 that the journalists were last seen in a white van in the rebel-held Maadi district of Aleppo on July 13. The...