THREE Britons were kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen yesterday, the latest in a spate of seizures that has highlighted the growing lawlessness of the Gaza Strip.

A British aid worker, Kate Burton, 25, had been taking her visiting parents on a tour of the southern border town of Rafah when their car was stopped by masked gunmen. They were bundled into a white Mercedes and driven away at speed.

Last night police sources said that the kidnappers were negotiating with Palestinian officials for the release of the three Britons. It was not clear if any ransom demand had been made.

Numerous foreign citizens working in Gaza have been snatched by Palestinian groups over the past year, though invariably they have been freed unharmed within a few hours.

But fears for the safety of the three Britons will grow the longer the latest kidnapping drama goes on.

Within the past week heightened security concerns prompted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to upgrade its travel warnings. Britons had previously been advised to travel to Gaza only on essential business but are now bluntly warned not to go at all.

Ms Burton, who studied in London and graduated with a masters in international law, is believed to come from Scotland. She has spent four months doing public relations work at the al-Mezan Palestinian human rights organisation in Gaza and was planning to stay on until next summer.

Mohammad Abdullah, one of al-Mezan’s field workers in Rafah, said that Ms Burton went to Bethlehem with her parents, who were visiting from Britain, for Christmas and returned on Tuesday. Witnesses told police that as the trio visited Rafah yesterday gunmen stopped the Britons’ car and pulled them into the Mercedes, which was driven northwards. Security guards gave chase but the kidnappers escaped .

Mr Abdullah said last night that al-Mezan staff had contacted many of the Palestinian militant groups, but all had denied any involvement in the Britons’ seizure. One theory was that a Fatah splinter group, the Black Panthers, was responsible.

The British Consulate in Jerusalem was trying urgently to discover the whereabouts of the three through the United Nations Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA. Palestinian security forces were also involved in the search.

“Our staff is looking for her. We have some volunteers looking for her,” an al-Mezan spokesman said. “You try to protect everybody here, but sometimes you cannot control everything.”

A week ago a Dutch principal and his Australian deputy who taught at the elite American International School in northern Gaza were seized and held for eight hours by gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They were demanding the release of their leader, who is being held in jail in Jericho for the murder of an Israeli minister.

But more often the kidnappers have turned out to be renegade groups of gunmen who have used the seizure of international workers as a way to bargain the release of relatives from Palestinian prisons, or former police officers seeking payment of unpaid wages.

“Unlike in Iraq the kidnappings are not so much aimed at the foreigners themselves as at embarrassing the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and trying to show he has no control over the Gaza Strip,” John Strawson, a Middle East expert at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said.

“The main aim is just to demonstrate that no one is safe. I suspect they will be released unharmed. It will be a big change to the situation if anything happened to them.”

HELD HOSTAGE

December 21, 2005 Two teachers, Dutchman Hendrik Taatgen and his Australian assistant Brian Ambrosio, working at the English-language private American School in northern Gaza, were kidnapped after their car was stopped by gunmen north of Gaza City. They were freed eight hours later

August 2005 Mohamed Ouathi, a sound technician for France 3 television, was kidnapped

August 2005 Palestinian militants snatched British aid worker Christina Blunt and two other United Nations staff as they drove through the town of Khan Younis

July 2005 A British contractor kidnapped by masked men at a Palestinian refugee camp was freed unharmed. Mike Rabicano and an Austrian colleague had been abducted at gunpoint from their car in the Gaza Strip

September 2004 A producer for the American television network CNN was kidnapped by armed men who stopped his car, but left his two Western colleagues unharmed

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