Suspected Gaddafi loyalists, have kidnapped four Italian journalists and killed their local driver as the group travelled down a highway to Tripoli.

A rebel steps on a poster of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi at Rixos hotel, after gunmen released foreigners, in Tripoli August 24, 2011.

The Italian Foreign Ministry, says the four were stopped on Wednesday, by a group of civilians on the highway between Zawiya, a town 50 kilometers west of Tripoli. They were handed over to military men, who brought them to a private house.

One journalist phoned his company that all four were all right, but had their money and possessions stolen. Italian news agency ANSA has quoted the Italian consul, Guido De Sanctis, in rebel-held Benghazi. He says, the four journalists are being held in an apartment building between Bab al-Aziz-iya and the Rixos Hotel.