Al Aqsa gunmen freed hostages after Arafat okayed payoffs

[Gimel]

Palestinian gunmen agreed to release an American, a Briton and an Irishman kidnapped over the weekend, after Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat approved promises of payoffs for the militants and for some of their comrades in Israeli prisons, Palestinian officials said.




The three Westerners, members of a charity group working with a university in Nablus, were released Saturday, hours after they were seized on their way to their rented apartment in the West Bank city and whisked to a hiding place in the nearby Balata refugee camp.

The militants drove the hostages to a park in the early hours yesterday and called the security forces to pick them up, the officials said. The released hostages refused to speak to reporters, and their identities were not released. Israel Radio said they had been teaching English on a volunteer basis to Palestinian students in Nablus.

At around the same time in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the local commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Zakaria Zubeidi, and his followers gutted the headquarters of the newly appointed governor, Qaddora Musa. The building was empty and no one was hurt.


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[Gimel]

1. Is this..

terrorists capitulating to terrorists, or leader's actions being directed by his malitia? Either way, the order of law is being disruped in the WB as well as in Gaza. More chaos.

[bemildred]

2. We did have a story a while back about how the al Aqsa

fellows were free-lancing and looking for other funding
sources, that could well be what is going on here.