Abbas: Israeli raid, an unforgivable crime

MIDDLE EAST: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Israel's raid on a West Bank prison and seizure of a militant leader as a crime that would not be forgiven.

Across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Palestinians went on strike over an Israeli operation that has boosted interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of March 28 general elections.

Israeli security forces were on high alert after Ahmed Saadat's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Islamist militant group Hamas promised retaliation.

However, militants released the four remaining foreign hostages seized in response to the Israeli raid.

Speaking at the destroyed jail, Abbas accused British and U.S. monitors supervising the incarceration of Saadat and five other detained militants of complicity with Israel.

"What happened is an ugly crime which cannot be forgiven and a humiliation for the Palestinian people and a violation of all the agreements. Their arrest by Israel is illegal," Abbas said.

Meanwhile Islamic foreign ministers renewed support for Palestinians and blasted an Israeli raid on a West Bank prison to seize Palestinian militants as "state terrorism."

"Member states of this executive committee are unanimous with regard to backing the Palestinian people and their national economy so that their pressing needs would be met," the secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, told reporters.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi, who co-chaired the first ministerial meeting of the OIC executive committee with Ihsanoglu, said participants had stressed the need to assist the Palestinian Authority and the issue would be raised at an Arab summit in Khartoum later this month. Jericho, West Bank, Thursday AFP, Reuters