Palestinian Prisoners Surrender

Militant Leader Gives Up After Israeli Prison Raid, Foreigners Kidnapped In Retaliation

(CBS/AP)  Israeli troops using tanks, helicopters and bulldozers pounded a West Bank prison, forcing the surrender of a Palestinian militant leader and his accomplices in the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister.

Angry Palestinians blamed the British and Americans, because British monitors left the jail just before the raid, and Palestinian gunmen retaliated by kidnapping at least 10 foreigners, including an American teacher. It was the most widespread violence since Hamas militants swept parliamentary elections, and could foreshadow broader confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Frightened foreigners took refuge at Palestinian security headquarters in Gaza as militants attacked offices linked to the United States and Europe, torching the British Council building in Gaza City. Among those kidnapped were an American professor, two South Korean journalists, a Canadian aid worker and two Australian teachers at an American school.

After nightfall a Swiss Red Cross worker was released, leaving three foreigners in captivity — two French citizens and a South Korean.

It was the highest-profile Israeli incursion into a Palestinian town in months and came just two weeks before Israeli elections.

Palestinians condemned the raid, which left three of their countrymen dead, as a campaign stunt. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cut short a European trip and was on his way back home to deal with the crisis created by the prison siege, said Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat.

The raid came amid a breakdown in a carefully crafted 4-year-old deal between the Palestinians, Israel, the U.S. and Britain over the guarding of the prisoners. It underscored the wider collapse of relations between Israel and the Palestinians since the militant Hamas group won the Jan. 25 Palestinian elections. By chance, the U.S. team was not on duty Tuesday.

CBS News correspondent David Hawkins reports Israeli officials said recent statements by Palestinian officials and Hamas leaders that suggested they would soon be free inmates, combined with the withdrawal of the monitors, forced them to act.

"There were clear indications these killers would be set free," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. "We had to act to make sure these killers would stay under lock and key."

The target of the Israeli raid was Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO group, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger (audio). Saadat was jailed in Palestinian-ruled Jericho after the group claimed responsibility for the killing of Israeli Cabinet Minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001.

Saadat was elected to the Palestinian legislature in January.