NABLUS, West Bank - An American volunteer teaching in West Bank refugee camps was freed late Wednesday in Nablus after being held for a day by Palestinians. He appeared to be unharmed.
Michael Leighton Phillips, 24, was brought to the home of former Nablus mayor Ghassan Shakaa. He was accompanied by about 20 gunmen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, who claimed credit for freeing him. Al Aqsa is a violent group linked to the Fatah movement, headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Al Aqsa men said they spotted a suspicious car and stopped it, finding Phillips and four of his captors inside. They freed the American, but the kidnappers escaped, they said, adding that they did not know who the kidnappers were.
Phillips, from Mandeville, La., was seated at a table as news cameramen photographed him. He said he had been kidnapped on Tuesday and thanked the people who helped win his freedom. Later he spoke by telephone to his family and to Abbas.
Looking shaken but uninjured, Phillips said he hoped to remain in Nablus. "I don't want to leave."
His mother, Sharon Phillips, said her son told her he was abducted off the street and "was blindfolded, tied to a bed." He told her his abductors spoke no English.
"When we talked to him, he was with the Israeli army," she added.
Even after he was freed, it was unclear who had kidnapped Phillips or what they wanted.
Rumors of the 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.
Before he was released, Samah Atout, manager of relief group Project Hope, said she received a call saying Phillips had been kidnapped.
Standing near Phillips after his release, local Fatah leader Jamal Tirawi criticized the Hamas-led government over the kidnapping. Fatah and the Hamas have been in a power struggle since the Islamic movement ousted Fatah from power in January elections.
Tirawi said lawlessness could not take over. "This will not be Lebanon, this will not be Iraq," he said.
Phillips graduated in May from George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs and had been volunteering as an English teacher in the West Bank ever since.
Jeremy Wildeman, executive director of Project Hope, said from his office in Toronto that the volunteers typically work for three-month stints, but Phillips had asked to take on another three months.
He said Project Hope was based in the West Bank, but gets funding and technical support in Canada and Britain. The group describes itself as a nonprofit volunteer organization that provides educational and recreational activities, medical and humanitarian relief and practical training.
Wildeman said the volunteers mostly teach English and French to students who suffer from traumatic stress disorders.
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 newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, when a German volunteer was abducted and held for several hours.
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