Palestinian security department has urged westerners, especially
Europeans and Americans, to leave the Gaza Strip as the condition
and whereabouts of an abducted AFP journalist remains unknown.
"We asked international organizations that work in the Gaza
Strip to evacuate their foreigner employees for fears of new
kidnappings," a senior security official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, told reporters on Wednesday.
He added that security agencies are on high alert after hearing
of possible kidnappings targeting Europeans and Americans.
Meanwhile, the Agency France-Presse (AFP)'s photographer Jaime
Razuri, 50, a Peruvian, who was kidnapped on Jan. 1 in front of the
AFP office in Gaza by unknown gunmen, has been held captive for the
third day.
The Palestinian factions, including governing Hamas, Fatah and
the Islamic Jihad have unilaterally condemned Razuri's abduction
and called for captors to release him unconditionally.
Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Helal told
reporters that the ministry has no information about the
kidnappers.
Foreign journalists have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip before
but are usually released unharmed hours later. However, the
abducted Razuri has recalled the kidnapping of two FOX news
journalists last August who were held for 12 days.
The AFP's journalist is the first abduction in 2007 since the
Hamas-led government announced a plan to protect foreign press. The
abduction also serves as another stark reminder of the widening
state of chaos and disorder in the Gaza Strip.
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Earlier in the day, witnesses said that a member of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement was shot dead by a sniper
in northern Gaza Strip.
The sniper fled after he gunned down Eynaia Emad, 23, while he
was sitting in front of a Fatah senior militant's house in the town
of Beit Lahiya, according to the witnesses.
Meanwhile, paramedics announced that a member of Hamas' military
wing lay seriously wounded in hospital after a mysterious explosion
at his house in the east of Gaza city.
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Moreover, people found the body of a teenager in central Gaza Strip
and another body of a woman in the north on Wednesday morning.
The woman's body bore signs of torture and investigations into
the two killings are under way.
Abbas is expected to reshuffle security agency chiefs, seemingly
in a new bid to end the lawlessness state and internal violence, a
security source said.
(Xinhua News Agency January 4, 2007)
