Unknown group claims responsibility for Gaza kidnapping

An unknown group, calling itself the Saraya and Brigades of the Mujahidin-Holy Jerusalem, claimed responsibility on Saturday for kidnapping three Britons who were released unharmed late on Friday.

The three, 25-year-old human rights activist Kate Burton and her visiting parents, were snatched away by gunmen in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on Wednesday.

The group said in a statement sent to reporters that its militants had decided to give amnesty to the three Britons as a good-will gesture.

"We decided to release them because Britain and the European Union have pledged to exert every possible effort to end the Israeli aggressions in the northern Gaza Strip," said the statement.

Israel started earlier this week to build up and enforce a buffer zone in northern Gaza in a bid to stop Palestinian militant launching rockets on Israel.

But the group warned of kidnapping international observers for the Jan. 25 Palestinian legislative elections if the Israeli airstrikes and artillery shellings do not stop.

"If the aggressions on the Gaza Strip do not end as soon as possible, next time we will carry out wider actions and all foreign observers for the coming elections will be our targets," the statement said.

Palestinian sources said that the three British hostages were set free at about 23:10 p.m. (2110 GMT) on Friday and in good health.

The three were first brought to the Khan Younis police headquarters in the southern Gaza Strip and then escorted by police to a local hotel in Gaza City. They were later taken to Jerusalem for recuperation.

Palestinian security sources said Burton is expected to give a press conference, but did not reveal the exact time.

The Palestinian National Authority condemned the abduction as damaging to the Palestinian national interests.

The abduction, in world spotlights, underscored rising chaos in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier in the day, discontented members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a splinter group of the mainstream Fatah movement, stormed and occupied an office of the Palestinian Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip, demanding jobs.

On Thursday, clashes between a Gaza clan and the Palestinian police led to the death of three Palestinians, including a police officer. Relatives and colleagues of the killed officer gathered at the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border on Friday to protest against the killing, throwing the terminal into chaos.

Source: Xinhua