TUNIS (Reuters) - Fourteen Tunisian workers were kidnapped as they traveled to work at an oil refinery in western Libya, a human rights activist said on Friday.

They were abducted by members of a Libyan tribe demanding the release of a relative who is imprisoned in Tunisia on drug charges, Mustafa Abdel Kebir, president of the Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

The group was seized in the small town of Zawiya, west of the capital Tripoli, he added. He did not say when the kidnapping took place.