Palestinian gunmen kidnapped two foreign United Nations employees and a Palestinian one in the Gaza Strip on Monday and police freed them minutes later in a raid on the militants' hideout.
The incident in Khan Younis refugee camp was the latest in a series of kidnappings involving foreigners and another sign of growing lawlessness in the Gaza Strip, where Israel plans to begin a pullout next week. "The two kidnapped people were freed after security forces stormed the (hideout). Security forces are still chasing the kidnappers," a security official said, referring to the foreign abductees.
A UN spokesman identified the two as Steven Karl, a Swiss national, and Christine Blunt, a Briton, both employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). UNRWA later said a third worker, a Palestinian, had also been freed.
Local residents and a police officer who witnessed the abduction said armed Palestinians had cut off a UN vehicle flying the world organisation's blue flag.
Gun battles ensued between police and the gunmen, from the dominant Fatah movement, and two civilians were wounded in the fighting, medical officials said.
The kidnapping came a day after Palestinian security forces in Khan Younis arrested Sulaiman al-Fara, a top commander of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and a director of senior PLO official Farouq al Qadoumi's office in the camp.
Dozens of gunmen seized municipal buildings on Sunday in Khan Younis and threatened "actions beyond imagination" to secure Fara's release.
GAZA PULLOUT ON TRACK Israel pressed ahead on Monday with preparations for its pullout from Gaza, signalling business as usual despite Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's resignation in protest at the plan. "We are back to our routine ... The disengagement will begin as planned, exactly a week from today," Asaf Shariv, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told Army Radio a day after Netanyahu's walkout at a cabinet meeting.
Sharon's security cabinet on Monday discussed a plan to hand over to Egypt responsibility for a flashpoint corridor along Gaza's southern border, a move that could enable Israel to assert it has vacated all of occupied Gaza.
The deal, which Israel's cabinet will vote on in the coming weeks, calls for Egypt to deploy on the border 750 policemen who would try to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza militants, security officials told the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.
Israel will finalise its draft of the deal after the withdrawal, a committee source told Reuters. Officials had said the agreement must ensure Egypt promises not to allow any kind of weapons transfers to the Palestinians, the source said.
Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, named as acting finance minister, has been instructed by Sharon to continue Netanyahu's fiscal policy, the prime minister's office said.
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