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Fox Journalists Freed After 2 Weeks in Gaza

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Times Staff Writer

Two Fox News journalists were freed in good condition Sunday after being held by kidnappers in the Gaza Strip for nearly two weeks, the longest abduction of foreigners in the chaotic Palestinian enclave in recent years.

Correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were transferred to a hotel in Gaza City by Palestinian security officers after days of efforts by Palestinian leaders to get them released.

Palestinian officials did not say what assurances, if any, had been made to the captors to win the journalists’ release. The pair had been held by a previously unknown group calling itself Holy Jihad Brigades.

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Centanni, 60, appeared tearful but healthy upon arriving at the seafront Beach Hotel in Gaza City. He later told the Fox network that he and Wiig had been blindfolded, bound and handled roughly by the kidnappers after being seized Aug. 14 and later forced at gunpoint to declare on videotape that they had converted to Islam.

Less than two hours before the men were released, the kidnappers released a videotape of the two wearing tan caftans and making the statements about having become Muslims.

“I’m emotional because I’m so happy to be out,” Centanni told his network on air by telephone shortly after being freed. “There were times when I thought that, you know, ‘I’m dead.’ And now I’m not. And so, thank God.”

Centanni, an American correspondent based in Washington, and Wiig, 36, a freelance cameraman from New Zealand, were taken across the border to Israel a few hours later.

The two were seized in Gaza City by masked gunmen who blocked their car and forced them into another vehicle. There was no word about them for more than a week, until Centanni and Wiig appeared in a videotape released Wednesday along with a statement by the captors demanding the release of all Muslims held by the United States within 72 hours.

The U.S. government rejected the demand and the deadline passed Saturday without further word from the kidnappers.

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On Sunday, Palestinian officials were tight-lipped about the steps that led to the journalists’ release.

Whoever may have been behind the abduction was not publicly identified.

For the previous two days, Palestinian officials had signaled progress in efforts to broker the men’s release through unspecified intermediaries. On Sunday, the Popular Resistance Committees, an armed group that has fired many of the Kassam rockets launched into southern Israel, said it had acted as a go-between.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of the militant group Hamas, said the kidnappers had acted on their own, and not as part of any established Palestinian faction or outside network such as Al Qaeda. But he declined to offer more details.

Palestinian authorities sidestepped questions about whether they would seek to prosecute the kidnappers.

The Hamas-led Palestinian government, facing international aid cuts and renewed hostilities with Israel, appeared eager for an end to the hostage episode and had urged the release of the journalists.

The abduction case stood out even amid the staggering disorder of the Gaza Strip, where a dozen or so foreigners, including journalists, have been kidnapped in the last year.

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In most of those cases, the captives were released within a few hours. Most times, kidnappers have taken hostages to demand jobs in the Palestinian security forces or to settle a score on behalf of one clan or armed faction. But that was apparently not the case this time.

Centanni told Fox News that the kidnappers placed hoods over their heads and bound their wrists tightly with plastic ties before taking them to a garage, where they lay face down on a dirt-covered concrete floor. A generator rumbled noisily in the background, Centanni said, prompting him to worry that the captors could shoot the men without being heard.

But, he said, “my better nature led me to think that I’m no good to them dead. So I kept my hopes up.”

The kidnapping created new uncertainties for foreigners who work in Gaza, such as journalists and aid workers. The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem had telephoned American journalists after the abduction, urging them to stay away from Gaza for the time being.

Centanni and Wiig told a news conference in Gaza City later that they hoped the abduction would not deter journalists from going to the territory to report on conditions there. Officials and ordinary Palestinians are generally eager to tell the world their side of the story and for the most part have welcomed foreign journalists.

It would be a “great tragedy for the people of Gaza” if journalists stayed away, even though reporting there is difficult and at times dangerous, Wiig said. Earlier Sunday, an Israeli airstrike near Gaza City hit an armored vehicle owned by the Reuters news agency, injuring two Palestinian journalists.

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Separate Israeli airstrikes Sunday killed three Hamas militants in a neighborhood at the edge of Gaza City, and sniper fire killed a fourth in the same area, Palestinian officials said.

Early today, Israel killed at least three members of the Hamas-led security forces.

Palestinian officials said four died in an Israeli airstrike. Israel’s military said two Palestinian gunmen were killed in a shootout with the army and another in an airstrike after the group had approached Israeli soldiers.

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Times special correspondent Rushdie abu Alouf in Gaza City contributed to this report.

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