GUNMEN set light to British offices and kidnapped foreigners in Gaza and the West Bank yesterday in a frenzy of violence triggered by an Israeli army assault on a Jericho prison holding the suspected killers of an Israeli Cabinet minister.

The Palestinians accused Britain and the United States of colluding with the Israelis. Minutes before the assault the two countries had withdrawn their international monitors from the jail, saying that their safety could no longer be guaranteed.

A Palestinian security guard and a prisoner were killed, and dozens more wounded, as the Israelis smashed the prison walls with tanks and bulldozers and mounted a ten-hour siege until the prisoners surrendered.

As the crisis unfolded, enraged Palestinians kidnapped at least nine foreigners, burnt the British Council office in Gaza City and attacked an American cultural centre and an HSBC bank in Ramallah.

As gunmen stormed into hotels looking for hostages, westerners fled the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) temporarily withdrew their international staff from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised all Britons to leave.

Those kidnapped included a Swiss ICRC representative in Khan Yunis, two French humanitarian workers with Médecins du Monde, two French and one South Korean journalist, two Australian teachers from an American school in the Gaza Strip, an American in Jenin and another in Gaza City. Most were later released.

Last night thousands of Palestinians mounted demonstrations, chanting “Death to the Americans, Death to the British”. Militant leaders threatened severe reprisals.

The violence followed the collapse of a four-year-old deal under which British and US officials supervised the detention of Ahmed Saadat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, accused by Israel of ordering the assassination of Rehavam Zeevi, its Tourism Minister, in 2001.

The Palestinians refused to hand Saadat and his alleged accomplices to Israel, but agreed to hold them in the jail under internationalsupervision. Last night Israeli judges said that he would now be put on trial.

British officials had long expressed concern about the security of the monitors and the freedoms granted to the prisoners, who were reportedly allowed mobile phones and conjugal visits. They were particularly alarmed by remarks from the incoming Hamas Government and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, supporting their release.

Yesterday the Foreign Office released a March 8 letter to Mr Abbas from John Jenkins, the British Consul-General in Jerusalem, protesting that the Palestinian Authority had never fully complied with the agreement. “The pending handover of governmental power to a political party that has repeatedly called for the release of the Jericho detainees also calls into question the political sustainability of the monitoring mission,” it read.

The three British monitors left Jericho yesterday morning. British officials denied that they had co-ordinated their departure with Israel, but troops moved in as soon as they left.

An Israeli commander waiting outside Jericho decided that the monitors’ departure rendered the agreement void. A 100-strong force backed by tanks and helicopters sped to the prison to seize Saadat and his colleagues, but was confronted by Palestinian guards, and a gun battle erupted.

Troops using loud-hailers warned those inside to come out or be killed. Tank shells and missiles demolished the outer walls of the prison. More than 180 prisoners emerged, stripped to their underwear, blindfolded with their hands aloft. Israeli troops estimated that another 80 remained inside the compound as forces pounded it with tank shells and heavy machine guns.

From inside the prison Mr Saadat spoke defiantly to TV stations during the day, insisting that he would not be captured alive. But after nightfall he and the other remaining prisoners surrendered, and were led away by the Israelis.

Palestinian leaders accused the British of collusion with Israel, and the acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Government of acting tough in advance of Israel’s general election on March 28.

Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator, called the siege a “massive provocation that could likely lead to unprecedented unrest in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territory”.

Mark Regev, an Israeli spokesman, blamed the Palestinian Authority for allowing the monitor agreement to fail. “We couldn’t have a situation where murderers would be walking around free instead of being under lock and key.”

MILITANT READY TO DIE FOR THE CAUSE

Mahmoud Abbas has said that he would free Saadat if the PFLP took responsibility for his security. Israel said that it would kill Saadat if he were freed

Times Recommends

• Experts baffled by vanishing sea lions
• CIA caught in a dirty and secretive war
• Double life of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab