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Journalists from across the world have been targeted by Muammar Gaddafi's security forces while reporting a war in which the front lines have often been difficult to define.

Four New York Times journalists were handed over to the Turkish embassy in Tripoli on Monday, six days after being captured in the eastern city of Ajdabiya. The four, whose driver Mohamed Shaglouf is still missing, later described being sexually assaulted and threatened with decapitation by their captors. They were only released after the intervention of diplomats from Turkey, a country that has been eager to help western reporters in trouble in the desert nation.

Meanwhile, Dave Clark and Roberto Schmidt, two Agence France-Presse journalists, were released on Thursday after five days in captivity along with Joe Raedle, an agency photographer for Getty Images. The three had been covering escalating tension in Ajdabiya.

"Libya was never a friendly neighbourhood for journalists, but we've now seen a paradigm shift where the government is not simply trying to co-opt the media but is directly targeting the media very frequently," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the Middle East co-ordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "This stems from an authoritarian urge to restrict the flow of information. But it is categorically more vicious and intense and has much more severe consequences for journalists reporting on the ground in the Middle East."

However, while most western journalists have been allowed to walk free, reporters from the Arab media have not been so lucky. Mohammed al-Nabbous, the founder of online opposition broadcaster Libya Alhurra TV, was killed by sniper fire on Sunday while covering a battle near Benghazi.

Four al-Jazeera journalists – Ahmed Vall Ould Addin, Lotfi al-Messaoudi, Kamel Atalua and Ammar al-Hamdan – remain in state detention. It is not clear why they were detained, although the Qatari-owned broadcaster's coverage has been notable for its sympathy for the Libyan rebels. The whereabouts of six Libyan journalists detained shortly after writing about the escalating crisis is unknown.

Correspondents reporting from Tripoli have complained of being "herded around like goats" on government-sanctioned trips. Jon Williams, the BBC's foreign news editor, described his reporters in the capital as working from a "gilded cage". "Movements are still restricted, which is frustrating given events in Misrata, 130 miles from Tripoli," Williams said, noting that the Gaddafi regime remains tightly in control of the areas it still holds. "This is a most serious situation but it's impossible for us to access [non-sanctioned areas], leaving us reliant on agency and user-generated content."