![BBC Journalist Alan Johnston Freed in Gaza [Updated]](https://progresspond.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/pattern-1-1280x640.jpg)
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Gaza Reports Alan Johnston Freed
GAZA CITY (Sky News) – Kidnapped British journalist Alan Johnston has been freed and handed over to Hamas officials, according to news reports in Gaza. The BBC reporter, who was kidnapped by gunmen on March 12, was seen in TV pictures being led from a building by gunmen.
Reports of his release came on Hamas’s TV station and in a text message sent to news agency Associated Press.
Johnston (centre) is seen this morning
During his time as a hostage, three videos were released featuring images of Mr Johnston or of his belongings. Calls were made for his release in rallies worldwide and in an online petition signed by some 200,000 people.
● BBC News
VIDEO: Johnston felt ‘buried alive’
(REUTERS) Jul. 4 – Freed BBC reporter Alan Johnston has thanked Hamas for securing his release after 114 days in captivity.
Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in the Gaza Strip, was freed after a deal between the ruling Hamas Islamists and the al Qaeda-inspired clan group that kidnapped him on March 12. The 45-year-old British journalist thanked the BBC for mobilising an international campaign to to ensure he wasn’t forgotton. He also thanked Hamas for securing his release.
TEL AVIV (Christian Science Monitor) – In an assertion of its new superiority over Gaza, Hamas secured the freedom of British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent Alan Johnston, whose nearly four months of captivity was the longest endured by any foreigner abducted during the recent unrest in the Palestinian territories.
Hamas’s mix of negotiations and a threat of force to gain the reporter’s release marks an epilogue to the Islamist group’s swift takeover of Gaza from the secular Fatah Party last month.
The image of a tired but grateful Mr. Johnston seated alongside Hamas’s senior leadership in Gaza served notice to Palestinians and the international community of the Islamist group’s determination to reestablish internal stability in the coastal strip.
“It’s the most unimaginable relief that it’s over,” said Johnston shortly after being freed. Hamas’s leaders “made a huge effort to pressure the kidnappers.” Since his March 12 abduction from the streets of Gaza City, Johnston had been held by a radical group that calls itself the “Army of Islam” and is backed Gaza’s Dagmush clan – one of several families whose power has grown because of the vacuum created by the Hamas-Fatah rivalry. As long as the clan flouted calls by Hamas leaders to release Johnston and made threats to kill him, Hamas’s ascension couldn’t be considered complete.
“We won’t let anyone kidnap or do anything against our interests. We want to maintain calm and the law in Gaza,” said Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesman, on Israel Radio. “I think that all of the families understand this message, and the situation in Gaza will be stable.”
GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli troops and armour crossed into the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing five militants from the Islamist Hamas group, which controls the coastal Palestinian territory.
Israeli aircraft attacked several militants who came close to troops during the raid, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. Palestinian medics said two militants were killed in the air strike and a Hamas television cameraman was wounded.
Palestinian medical workers said the bodies of three other militants arrived in hospital, apparently killed in the ground clashes. Five of those killed by Israel belonged to Hamas, medics said.
Palestinian ambulance worker Azmi Abu Dalal said Israeli forces seized him and several colleagues in the camp when they tried to evacuate a wounded Palestinian man from a security post Hamas gunmen had been using and which the army took over.
Abu Dalal said soldiers took them to a nearby house and then used them as human shields to exit the area. “We stayed in their custody for three hours,” the medic said.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
