Israeli hostage 'won't be freed'

2006-06-27 14:50

Gaza City - Armed Palestinian groups will refuse to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier as long as their conditions for his release are not met, a spokesperson for the Popular Resistance Committees said on Tuesday.

"The resistance will continue to hold the soldier. We are confident he is in a location the enemy cannot reach," Abu Abir told a news conference.

"Our demands in the statement which has been published were clear: the release of (Palestinian) women and children," from Israeli jails, he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has categorically refused to meet the demands.

Abu Abir denied reports that Israel knew where the abducted 19-year-old soldier was being held.

An army intelligence official briefing parliament's defence and foreign affairs committee said Israel knew where Gilad Shalit was.

But Abu Abir said such reports were being put about to "unnerve the fighters into moving the soldier from his hideout to another location, so that he can be tracked by drones but that won't work".

'We have started a kidnapping campaign'

Confronted with a massive build-up of Israeli troops across the Gaza border with a view to a threatened widescale military action, Abu Abir said: "If they launch an incursion in the Gaza Strip, it will be their cemetery.

"We have started a kidnapping campaign and we will continue," he threatened.

On Monday, the Popular Resistance Committees, the armed wing of Hamas and a third group, called for the release of all Palestinian women and children under 18 from Israeli jails in exchange for information on the kidnapped soldier.

According to Palestinian statistics, 126 women and 300 minors under the age of 18 are being detained in Israel out of a total of some 9 400 Palestinians.

- AFP