GAZA: Palestinian security carry out searches for abducted Fox News journalists in Gaza.

Palestinian security forces conducted searched across Gaza on Tuesday (August 15) after Palestinian gunmen kidnapped two foreign journalists working for Fox News Channel, a witness and the U.S. television network said. A Fox spokeswoman in New York named the two journalists as correspondent Steve Centanni, an American, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, from New Zealand. A Fox news report said the network did not know who had seized them but that "negotiations were under way to secure their release". There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction. The witness said two vehicles blocked the journalists' transmission truck in the centre of Gaza City and a masked man put a gun to a bodyguard's head, forcing him to the ground. The kidnappers then sped away with the two journalists. Palestinian police stopped and searched cars. A spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that leads the Palestinian government, condemned the kidnapping. Similar incidents in the past in Gaza have ended with the release, usually within hours, of kidnapped foreign journalists or aid workers. Many of the abductions were carried out by Palestinians pressing a grievance against the Palestinian government or its security forces.

ITN Source | August 15, 2006

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