OPT:Gunmen kidnap two United Nations employees in Gaza

Gaza (dpa) - Masked gunmen kidnapped two employees - one Palestinian and the other Australian - of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) in Gaza City Friday afternoon, Palestinian security officials said.
The two, researchers for the UNDP, were dragged from a U.N. car outside Gaza City's Adam hotel in the early afternoon, and driven off to an unknown destination in a car without license plates and with tinted windows.

The Palestinian abductee was named as Steve Sibella, from East Jerusalem. The name of the Australian was not immediately known.

Police sources said the abductors were members of the Abed clan, one of whose members, senior Palestinian security official Jihad Abed, was kidnapped in Gaza Thursday afternoon by militants belonging to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

The UNDP researchers were most likely abducted as bargaining chips to secure the release of Jihad Abed, the sources said. dpa sar jab wjh