GAZA CITY, 17 July 2004 — Five French citizens were kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen late yesterday in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officers said.
The officers said the five — two women and three men — were abducted by gunmen as they drank coffee in the southern town of Khan Yunis. The officers said they were doing everything in their power to find the kidnap victims and release them.
The kidnapping was the third in the Gaza Strip in less than 10 hours.
Earlier yesterday Col. Khaled Abu Aloula, Director of Military Coordination in the southern part of the territory was taken from his car as he returned to Gaza City from Khan Yunis.
Palestinian security officers said the kidnappers were Palestinian policemen who had recently been fired from their jobs. They said that earlier in the day Aloula had refused their request to help reinstate them.
Also yesterday militants freed Palestinian Chief of Police Ghazi Jabali after kidnapping him in a highway ambush that deepened the sense of chaos ahead of an announced withdrawal from Gaza by Israel.
Jabali was kidnapped by militants who exchanged gunfire with his bodyguards on the highway five kilometers south of Gaza City. Two bodyguards were wounded.
The kidnappings came amid a row between the UN Middle East envoy and the Palestinians. Palestinian officials were infuriated earlier this week when chief UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said at a UN Security Council briefing that President Yasser Arafat was blocking vital reforms within the Palestinian Authority and accused him of hindering peace moves.
Palestinian activists said yesterday that an armed group had banned Roed-Larsen’s entry into the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian Authority had earlier made clear that Roed-Larsen was not welcome in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
