interblog45: Palestinians Attack Foreigners After Raid

IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
AP Online
03-14-2006
Dateline: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip

Foreign journalists, from left, Korean Yong Tae-young, 41, a correspondent for public broadcaster KBS, SIPA agency photographer Alfred Yacobzadeh and French national Caroline Laurent, a correspondent for Elle magazine, are held by Palestinian gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Khan Yunis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Tuseday, March 14, 2006. Nine foreign nationals were kidnapped in protest against an Israeli raid of a West Bank prison. (AP Photo)

Palestinian police whisked foreigners to safety, and several international relief agencies closed in the Palestinian territories on Tuesday in response to the kidnapping of aid workers and journalists by angry militants.

Gunmen abducted 10 journalists and aid workers and vandalized offices linked to the U.S. and Britain, in the most violent campaign against foreigners in recent memory in the Palestinian territories. The mayhem was prompted by Israel's raid on a West Bank prison and seizure of a Palestinian militant leader and his accomplices in the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister.

Frightened foreigners sought refuge at Palestinian security headquarters, and a U.N. jeep came under fire as it tried to leave the coastal strip. Angry Palestinians accused Britain and the U.S. of complicity in Israel's siege of the prison.

By the end of the day, all but three of the kidnapped foreigners were freed.

The fury hit aid groups and organizations that have been working to alleviate the grinding poverty Palestinians face in Gaza, and it threatened to disrupt relief efforts.

"The European Commission deplores the attacks on member states' offices. The first to suffer are the Palestinian people," said Johannes Laitenberger, spokesman for the European Union's executive office.

The outbreak of anti-foreigner violence was the second in recent weeks. Reacting to Danish cartoons disparaging the Prophet Muhammad, angry Palestinians stormed European buildings and briefly held some aid workers. The relief teams had just started returning to the coastal strip when Tuesday's violence sent them scurrying for safety again.

Several international aid agencies, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said they were temporarily pulling their staff out of the West Bank and Gaza.

Officials said U.N. operations would not be affected, as the 8,500 local Palestinian workers would remain on the job, while 13 foreign U.N. staffers were leaving the Palestinian areas.

The kidnappings started shortly after Israeli forces surrounded the Jericho prison, demanding the surrender of Ahmed Saadat, the leader of a radical PLO faction, and four of his alleged accomplices in the 2001 killing of an Israeli Cabinet minister. A sixth militant was being sought on other charges.

In Gaza, gunmen went from room to room in hotels, looking for foreigners. By mid-afternoon, they had taken a Swiss Red Cross worker, two Australian teachers, two French medical workers and three journalists _ one French and two South Korean, Palestinian and foreign officials said.

Also kidnapped were a Canadian aid worker and an American professor at the American University in the West Bank town of Jenin.

The American professor, Douglas Johnson, said he was unharmed and understood his abductors' actions.

"They are angry over what is going on in Jericho. I feel sympathy with them," he told an Associated Press reporter at an abandoned cemetery where he was briefly held before being freed.

Palestinian security took some foreigners, including an AP photographer, into protective custody, while others found their own way to security headquarters.

Masked Palestinian security agents entered the AP office in Gaza City and instructed the photographer to collect his belongings. Speeding through Gaza streets, they took him to preventive security headquarters before escorting him and about 15 other foreigners to a crossing point with Israel.

Armed militants easily overpowered Palestinian police on their way to vandalizing Western aid agencies.

Gunmen burst into a British cultural center in the Gaza Strip and after a brief shootout with Palestinian police, torched the building, then shot at Palestinian fire engines, hampering efforts to put out the flames, witnesses said. There were no reports of casualties.

Militants also stormed the offices of AMIDEAST, a private American organization that provides English classes and academic testing services. The rioters broke windows and beat a Palestinian employee who tried to stop them.

"We don't want to see any Americans here," one of the gunmen shouted when Palestinian police approached the office.

In Gaza City, a crowd stormed empty European Union offices, smashing windows and replacing the EU flag with a militant banner. Some of the intruders shouted: "Death to the Americans, death to the British."

In the West Bank, dozens of Palestinians occupied the local British Council office, which had been evacuated.