Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said the 7 Iranian Red Crescent workers who were kidnapped in Libya had established phone contacts with their families this morning.

"Today, the Iranian hostages in Libya held phone talks with their families," Salehi told reporters on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit here in Tehran on Friday.

He said that the foreign ministry has had several contacts with Libyan officials, including Libyan foreign minister bout the Iranian hostages, and expressed the hope that the kidnapped Iranian nationals would be set free in the near future.

On Tuesday, a Libyan foreign ministry spokesman announced that all the aid workers kidnapped in the Eastern city of Benghazi were healthy.

The Libyan Red Crescent said in a statement earlier this month that armed men kidnapped a seven-member delegation from the Iranian Red Crescent visiting Benghazi.

The Iranians were heading to the Tibesti hotel when an armed group intercepted them. They were loaded into a different car and whisked away to an unknown location, the statement added.

The driver of the vehicle, a local volunteer, was not taken. The delegation arrived in Libya early August at the invitation of the Libyan Red Crescent.
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News ID 182579