Here’s the latest news in the Palestinian kidnapping of a British “human rights activist” who worked for a virulently anti-Israel group: Intense efforts to free British hostages in Gaza.

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Palestinian security officers and British diplomats were working round the clock to secure the release of three members of a British family kidnapped at gunpoint in the Gaza Strip.

A human rights worker, her mother and father were snatched at gunpoint and bundled into a white Mercedes in the flashpoint southern Gaza town of Rafah close to the border with Egypt on Wednesday.

One of the hostages has been named as Kate Burton, in her mid-20s, who had spent the last three months working in Gaza for the Al-Mizan human rights centre. She was believed to be showing her parents around when they were snatched, a British official said. …

Late Wednesday, local security sources said the kidnappers belonged to a group known as the Black Panthers, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas’s ruling Fatah movement. A Palestinian security source said the search was concentrated on southern Gaza, around Rafah and in the nearby town of Khan Yunis.

And the unintentionally ironic statement of the day:

The interior ministry called on armed Palestinian groups to put an end to kidnappings of foreigners which it said “bring disrepute on our people”.

“Those who call themselves fighters should not stoop to behaviour worthy of crooks and bandits,” it said.