Palestinian Interior Minister Hani al-Qawasmeh said Sunday that his ministry doesn't have any information that British journalist Alan Johnston who was kidnapped in Gaza five weeks ago "was killed".

"We don't have any information confirms that the kidnapped British journalist was killed," al-Qawasmeh said in a news conference held in Gaza on Sunday evening.

Earlier in the day, a senior Palestinian security source also said that the leaflet published in Gaza, which claims responsibility for executing the British journalist who works for the BBC, is "not credible".

The source, who spoke in condition of anonymity, said the Palestinian security forces is taking in consideration the issue of publishing such kind of a leaflet in such circumstance.

"But we usually don't deal with false or rootless leaflets that no one real is standing behind it," he added.

A group calling itself "the Brigades of Jihad and Monotheism" said in a leaflet e-mailed to media that it killed Alan Johnston, a BBC reporter in Gaza who was kidnapped by unknown individual five weeks ago.

The group said "we are sorry to say that we killed him" after the Palestinian National Authority and the British government neglected their demands to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Dozens of Palestinian journalists as well as members of the Journalists Union and the Committee to Protect Journalists set up a tent in front of Gaza's parliamentary building toward Prime Minister Ismail Haneya's office four weeks ago to call for revealing information on Johnston.

Eleven journalists have been kidnapped in Gaza over the past three years. All were released unharmed, most within days of capture.

Source: Xinhua