Libyan PM Ali Zeidan has been seized
by armed men in the capital, Tripoli.
Mr Zeidan was taken from his hotel before dawn "by gunmen to an unknown place for unknown reasons", said a government statement.
A former rebel group loosely allied to the government said it had arrested him following a prosecutor's warrant. The government has denied this.
The government has been under pressure after US commandos seized senior al-Qaeda suspect Anas al-Liby in Libya.
Mr Liby was snatched on Saturday in Tripoli. He is wanted in the US over the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
On Monday, Libya demanded an explanation from the US ambassador over the incident.
The government is also struggling to contain rival tribal militias and Islamist militants who control parts of the country, two years after the revolt which overthrew Muammar Gaddafi.
In a related development, information reaching us indicates that a group of former rebels in Libya said Thursday it had "arrested" Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, after he was seized by gunmen from a Tripoli hotel in a dawn raid.
The Operations Cell of Revolutionaries, which in principle reports to the defense and interior ministries, said on Facebook it had seized Zeidan "on the prosecutor's orders".
The premier "was arrested under the Libyan penal code... on the instructions of the public prosecutor", the group said.
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