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TRIPOLI — In the days since the five brothers vanished at a checkpoint manned by Gadhafi loyalists, a small army of friends and relatives have fanned out across Tripoli.
They have searched hospitals and morgues. They have traveled to nearby farming areas in case the men were taken out of the city. They have talked to rebels and to supporters of Moammar Gadhafi, the ousted ruler.
They have found no sign of the men, aged 21 to 31.
"It's hard ... five children," their father Abdel Salam Abu Naama said quietly, laying out their passport photos on a cushion in his living room, as friends and relatives gathered around him.
Across Libya, thousands of people are believed to have disappeared in the chaos of the six-month civil war. One rebel official put the number at 50,000. However, the figure could not be confirmed independently. In the battle for Tripoli alone, hundreds of people killed in late August had to be buried in unmarked graves.
Now, with rebel forces tightening their control over the North African nation and only a few regime strongholds still putting up a fight, the painstaking process of finding the missing has begun.
