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| By Associated Press January 3, 2006 |
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A British aid worker freed by her Palestinian kidnappers says she regrets endangering her parents, who were abducted with her while on a visit to the Gaza Strip last week.
"I feel guilty ... because I took chances ... and put my parents at risk," Kate Burton said in an interview broadcast Monday on British Broadcasting Corp. television.
Burton and her parents Hugh, 73, and Helen, 55, were seized on Wednesday soon after visiting refugee camps in the south of the Gaza Strip, the latest in a rash of kidnappings of foreigners by Palestinian gunmen. They were released unharmed on Friday.
Burton, 25, who works for the human rights group Al-Mezan, said her parents understand the reason she lives in Gaza: "They are proud and pleased that I am living surrounded by amazing people and doing something I believe in."
Despite the kidnapping, she said, they have seen "the positive side of the Palestinian people."
Burton said in the short term she plans to return to her apartment in Gaza, but will weigh up whether to keep working there, move to the West Bank, "or work with the Palestinians from outside."
Burton said that she and her parents were abducted by two masked men with Kalashnikov rifles.
"Everything happened so fast ... your mind is a bit blank ... it's very surreal," she said. "I was thinking, 'This is Gaza, I've heard about these things. It will sort itself out in a few hours."
The three Britons were taken to three different locations during their captivity, Burton said.
"Emotions kind of go up and down - sometimes you are feeling very calm, you are even able to make jokes with people around you. At other times you are very tense, you are aware of the weapons around you, you are aware of these very aggressive looking men, that anything can happen at any time."
Burton said most Palestinians had few opportunities for education and economic advancement. "They've got no choice, so they (the kidnappers) think that fighting in this way is the only way."
The kidnapping had made her "love the Palestinian people even more," she said, adding that the majority were peace-loving and disapproved of violence.
Asked if she would like to see her kidnappers punished, she replied: "Obviously I would, because they haven't done the right thing, and if you don't stop them they probably will go on doing it in the future."
A previously unknown group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigades Jerusalem Branch claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. It threatened more abductions of foreigners if Israel doesn't abolish a "no-go" zone in the northern Gaza Strip that Israel says is meant to stop Palestinian rocket barrages.
The kidnappers said they released the hostages as a "goodwill gesture" after receiving assurances that Britain and the EU would seek an end to the Israeli buffer zone. British officials denied a deal had been struck.
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