Two teachers, one of them a Briton, have been found shot dead close to an oil and gas complex in western Libya.

The British man’s body was found with that of a New Zealand woman next to their luggage outside the city of Sabratha in a coastal area 60 miles from Tripoli where they were believed to have been teaching. Their belongings had not been taken and the motive for the killings remained unclear, a Libyan security official said. The deaths come in the wake of the shooting last month of an American teacher in Benghazi, in eastern Libya, raising fears the killings could be linked.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said diplomats were aware of the discovery of the bodies and were “urgently seeking further information from the authorities”.