Palestinian militants freed on Wednesday night two foreign journalists, a US reporter and a Briton photographer who had been abducted earlier in southern Gaza Strip, security sources said.

The sources said that the two foreign journalists were released after dozens of Palestinian police and security officers deployed in Kahn Younis and conducted a searching operation for the two foreigners.

Earlier reports said that militants abducted on Wednesday afternoon the two foreigners in the southern Gaza Strip city of Kahn Younis.

Several masked militants stopped the two foreigners and forced them under the threat of guns to go with them, said Palestinian security sources.

Witnesses also confirmed that a group of six militants said to be belonging to a group calling itself "the Black Panthers", an old armed wing of the ruling Fatah movement.

However, Palestinian police chief Gen. Alla Hosni told reporters that the kidnappers are members of Palestinian clan al- Najjar, one of the biggest clans in the city of Khan Younis.

They wanted to get job opportunities in the Palestinian security apparatuses as well as raising the ranks of some of the clan's members who are serving in the Palestinian police, he added.

Hosni vowed that the police would do all their best to end this phenomena of kidnapping foreigners, and use all their power to punish those who carry out the kidnapping.

It is not the first time that foreign employees or journalists are abducted in the Gaza Strip in recent months, but most of the hostages were released unharmed within short time after negotiations between militants and the Palestinian security forces.

Source: Xinhua