GAZA CITY, July 17 (AFP) - Palestinian security services in the Gaza Strip were placed on alert early Saturday after a series of kidnappings including those of four French nationals, the Palestinian police chief and a liaison officer with the Israeli army, officials said.
Police reinforcements were deployed around public buildings, ministries, the public television station and the official Wafa news agency. All leave was cancelled for the security services, the officials said without giving further details.
The state of alert was clamped down after four French nationals, two men and two women, were kidnapped by armed Palestinians while Palestinian police chief Ghazi Jabali was held in a separate incident. They were later freed.
Colonel Khaled Abu al-Ula, a Palestinian liaison officer with the Israeli army, remained captive in a house in Khan Yunis after some of his subordinates seized him to protest their dismissal, security sources said.
The kidnappers were understood to be former Palestinian security officials expressing grievances after being fired from their jobs.
Two senior Palestinian security officials handed in their resignations after the three kidnappings took place within a few hours, saying the situation was intolerable, a Palestinian official said.
The French were abducted in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip and locked in a building belonging to the Palestinian Red Crescent, security sources and witnesses told AFP.
They said the four were taken hostage in a cafe and marched to a dormitory inside the Red Crescent building by some 20 gunmen.
The gunmen later released the two women safe and sound but continued to hold the men for a while longer.
The kidnappings followed two earlier abductions of Palestinian officials.
Police chief Ghazi Jabali was released after four hours in the hands of dissident militants.
But Colonel Abu al-Ula remained captive in a house in Khan Yunis after some of his subordinates seized him to protest their dismissal, security sources said.
The senior Palestinian security officials, General Amin al-Hindi and Rashid Abu Shbek, handed in their resignation after the kidnappings.
Hindi headed the intelligence agency, while Shbek was chief of preventive security for the Palestinian territories.
In their letter of resignation to Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, they said that the "situation has become intolerable after what happened during the day" in the Gaza Strip.
The French were released following negotiations between officials of the Palestinian preventive security service and 20 Palestinian former security men who had been fired and were now demanding that they be reinstated.
"A solution was found to their problem," said a Palestinian official without revealing details.
The French team has been restoring the electricity network in the Khan Yunis refugee camp.
The Palestinian group who seized General Jabali for four hours accused him of corruption, security officials said.
He was released after negotiations between members of the Brigades of Martyrs of Jenin and Palestinian government officials.
The group is part of the People`s Resistance Committees, former members of Yasser Arafat`s group Fatah.
The Palestinians meanwhile asked the United Nations to press Israel to accept a world court ruling and tear down part of its West Bank security barrier, vowing to seek sanctions if it does not comply.
Debating a draft UN General Assembly resolution demanding that it heed the court decision, Palestinian representative Nasser al-Kidwa said Israel would become an "outlaw state" if it does not do so.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has already said he would ignore the non-binding ruling of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the UN`s highest tribunal.