The Palestinian Authority was braced for further unrest after a day-long Israeli siege of a West Bank jail prompted an unprecedented wave of abductions and threats of revenge against the Jewish state.
Three foreign hostages -- two French and a Korean -- were being held by Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli raid on the Jericho jail, which succeeded in its aim of netting a militant leader but sparked a violent reaction in the territories, much of it aimed at British and US interests.
Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), walked out late Tuesday of the cell block where he had taken refuge along with other militants jailed with him for their role in the 2001 murder of a far-right Israeli minister.
A US State Department spokesman urged both sides to exercise ‘calm and restraint’ amid mounting questions over why international monitors at the prison were removed just minutes before the raid. The UN Security Council also called for calm.
The president of the European Parliament roundly condemned Israel's massive raid on the prison and the wave of kidnappings of foreigners that followed it.
‘We strongly condemn the attack on the prison in Jericho by Israeli forces as well as the resulting kidnappings and acts of violence in the Palestinian territories today,’ Borrell, head of the European Union's directly elected assembly, said in a statement.
The PFLP vowed that the seizure of its jailed leader and other militants would ‘not pass without retaliation’ and all Palestinian factions later united in calling a general strike for Wednesday.
Palestinian security forces, issued with orders to respond with live fire to attacks against Western interests, were on high alert to prevent a repeat of the security anarchy.
Israeli troops had pounded the prison compound with tank and missile fire throughout the day in a bid to force the militants' surrender. Two Palestinian security guards were killed and 26 others wounded, five of them critically.
The operation came minutes after the three British monitors, part of a team that normally also includes Americans, were withdrawn from the prison, prompting furious charges of collusion from the Palestinians.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw denied the charges, saying the monitors were pulled out for their safety.
Hundreds of armed Palestinians reacted to the Israeli action by storming the British cultural centre in the Gaza Strip and set fire to it while gunmen barged into a American office used to teach English in Gaza City.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, the British cultural centre and a branch of HSBC bank were also attacked.
Palestinian security forces said all foreigners still at liberty had now left the Gaza Strip after being gathered at police headquarters in Gaza City for their own safety.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas abandoned a European tour late Tuesday, flying back from Strasbourg as the unrest flared.
Saadat and three other PFLP members had been jailed in Jericho, a prison under US and British supervision, since August 2002 after his militant faction claimed the 2001 killing of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Amid security chaos that threatens to deal a further blow to the moribund peace process, one South Korean and two French journalists, were kidnapped at gunpoint from a luxury Palestinian hotel on the Gaza City seafront.
The two French journalists were identified as Caroline Laurent, a correspondent for Elle magazine, and SIPA agency photographer Alfred Yacobzadeh, who was facing his second hostage ordeal after being kidnapped in Beirut during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.
The foreign ministry in Seoul named the abducted Korean as Yong Tae-young, 41, a correspondent for public broadcaster KBS.
South Korea is to send an envoy to the Gaza Strip in an effort to secure the release of a Korean journalist kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen.
The foreign ministry said Chung Dal-Ho, ambassador for overseas and Korean affairs, would seek the Palestinian government's help in securing the release of Yong.
The three foreign journalists were being held hostage for a second day on Wednesday ‘because the Palestinian Authority had not managed to protect Ahmed Saadat’ the PFLP said.
Five other foreigners were kidnapped in Gaza on Tuesday but were released unharmed while a US professor captured in the West Bank was also later freed.
Israeli Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said the prison raid was undertaken to prevent the militants going free after Abbas repeatedly voiced readiness to release them in recent weeks.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat condemned what he described as a ‘kidnapping operation’ and held Britain and the United States responsible for the safety of the PFLP leader, whose predecessor Abu Ali Mustafa was assassinated by Israel in 2001.