World

Kidnapped American Released In Nablus

October 11, 2006 / 1:18 PM EDT / CBS/AP

An American student was freed late Wednesday after being held for a day by Palestinians. He appeared to be unharmed.

Michael Leighton Phillips, 24, was brought to security headquarters in Nablus, where he was joined by a former mayor, Ghassan Shakaa, and security chief Tawfiq Tirawi, both members of the moderate Fatah movement.

It was unclear who had kidnapped him or how he was freed.

Phillips, from New Orleans, was seated at a table as news cameramen photographed him. He appeared comfortable as he thanked the people who helped win his freedom.

Rumors of his kidnapping swept through the West Bank early Wednesday. A previously unknown group calling itself Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility and sent a foreign news agency a photocopy of his passport and student card.

Phillips works for a charity called Project Hope, teaching English at refugee camps near the West Bank town of Nablus, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.

In other developments:

Israeli troops on a pre-dawn arrest raid shot to death a fugitive wanted by Israel, also in Nablus. Relatives identified the man as Abdullah Mansour, 31, a militant in the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Troops also shot and killed a Palestinian militant who infiltrated from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on Tuesday night wearing a bomb belt.

Israel's network of military checkpoints and road barriers in the West Bank has grown by 40 percent in the past year, part of an increasingly sophisticated system of controls that disrupts all aspects of Palestinian life, a U.N. agency said Wednesday.

Israel is deeply concerned about North Korea's nuclear test, fearing it could encourage Iran's nuclear program, which Israel sees a threat, reports .

The European Union said Wednesday it was giving $816 million in aid to benefit 160,000 Palestinian families this year, expanding the funding program that bypasses the Hamas-led government. It's an addition of 60,000 families, who now will get $339 a month under the program.

Jeremy Wildeman, executive director of Project Hope, said from his office in Toronto that they had not heard from Phillips since Tuesday. He said Phillips, from New Orleans, graduated in May from George Washington University and had been volunteering as an English teacher on the West Bank ever since.

Wildeman said Project Hope was based in the West Bank but carries out its fundraising and technical support in Canada and Britain. He said they mostly teach English and French to students who suffer from traumatic stress disorders.

He said the volunteers typically work for three-month stints, but that Phillips asked to stay another three months.

"Michael was more of an extreme. He quite enjoyed his experience and he didn't want to leave," he said.

Foreigners have been kidnapped and held briefly in Nablus in the past, then released unharmed. The most recent case was in February, during the storm over the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, when a German volunteer was abducted and held for several hours.