GAZA: Italian aid workers abuducted by Palestinian gunmen released in Gaza

Gunmen abducted two Italians working for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza on Tuesday (November 21) and freed them eight hours later in the latest in a spate of kidnappings of foreigners in the Palestinian territory. Palestinian security officials said the men identified by the ICRC as Claudio Moroni and Gianmarco Onorato had been freed unharmed after contact had been made with kidnappers and both were taken to the home of a top Fatah official in Gaza. "They look fine and unharmed, they are sitting and chatting," a witness at the official's home told Reuters. Gunmen from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement had abducted the men, demanding an inquiry into Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death two years ago, but were persuaded their action was harming the Palestinian cause, a source involved in talks to free the hostages said. The abductions had underscored the lawlessness in Gaza, where factional fighting and sanctions imposed on the Hamas government have worsened the poverty for 1.4 million people. A police officer said the men had been "taken out of their vehicle and put into another car which then sped away," near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. An ICRC spokesman in Jerusalem, Simon Schorno, said both abducted men were representatives of the Italian Red Cross. Moroni was a dual national with a Canadian passport as well, an ICRC spokesman in Gaza, Iyad Nasir, said. The Red Cross had "suspended its field operations" in Gaza after the kidnappings and its workers would remain in their offices and venture out only to provide aid in life-threatening situations, Nasir said.

ITN Source | November 22, 2006

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