Abbas orders manhunt for soldier
2006-06-26 15:17
Gaza City - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas ordered his security services on Monday to launch a massive manhunt for a kidnapped Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip, an official said.
"President Mahmud Abbas ordered prime minister Ismail Haniya, interior minister Said Siam and security service commanders to immediately launch a serious search today to release the soldier," the source told AFP.
The 20-year-old Israeli soldier, who also holds French nationality, was abducted during an attack on an army post on the Gaza Strip border on Sunday in which two Israeli servicemen and two Palestinian militants were killed.
The source said the manhunt would take place "throughout the Gaza Strip", and that the security services were about to deploy.
Threat of Israeli military retaliation
Abbas's spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeina said Abbas had ordered everyone to assume their responsibilities, faced with the threat of a wide-scale Israeli military retaliation after the kidnapping.
"The president asked everyone, the government and its leaders, to shoulder their responsibility faced with the dangerous situation and avoid a humanitarian, economic and military disaster," Abu Rudeina said.
The Palestinian president was locked in an intense round of contacts with Arab countries and the wider international community in order to stave off the possibility of an "Israeli military escalation", he said.
Attack condemned
Abbas has condemned Sunday's militant attack, and the Hamas-led Palestinian government - boycotted by both Israel and the West as a terrorist organisation - has also demanded the immediate release of the soldier.
Hamas's armed wing was among three militant groups which admitted carrying out the assault, saying it was to avenge the deaths of 22 Palestinian civilians killed in an alleged Israeli shelling and in a series of botched air strikes.
A representative of the Popular Resistance Committees, which together with the armed wing of Hamas and the previously unheard of Army of Islam claimed the attack, said in a telephone call to AFP that it was holding the soldier.
- AFP