The Palestinian Authority is on heightened alert after a day-long Israeli siege of a West Bank jail prompted an unprecedented wave of abductions and threats of revenge against the Jewish state.

Three foreign captives - two French and a Korean - were being held by Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli raid on the Jericho jail, which succeeded in its aim of netting a resistance leader but sparked a violent reaction in the territories, much of it directed at British and US interests.

Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), along with other Palestinian political activists jailed with him for their role in the 2001 murder of a far-right Israeli minister, surrendered to Israeli troops late on Tuesday.

A US State Department spokesman urged both sides to exercise "calm and restraint" amid mounting questions over why the international monitors at the prison were removed just minutes before the raid. The UN Security Council also called for calm.

The president of the European Parliament roundly condemned Israel's massive raid on the prison and the wave of kidnappings of foreigners that followed it.

Borrell, the president of the European Parliament, said in a statement: "We strongly condemn the attack on the prison in Jericho by Israeli forces as well as the resulting kidnappings and acts of violence in the Palestinian territories today."

Retaliation
The PFLP vowed that the seizure of its jailed leader and other members would "not pass without retaliation" and all Palestinian factions later united in calling for a general strike on Wednesday.

Palestinian security forces, issued with orders to respond with live fire to attacks against Western interests, were on high alert to prevent a repeating of the security anarchy.

Israeli troops had pounded the prison compound with tank and missile fire throughout the day in an attempt to force the armless prisoners out of their cells.

Two Palestinian security guards were killed and 26 others wounded, five of them critically.

The operation came minutes after the three British monitors, part of a team that normally also includes Americans, were withdrawn from the prison, prompting furious charges of collusion from the Palestinians.

Monitors' safety 

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, denied the charges, saying the monitors were pulled out for their safety, but Palestinians argue that those monitors were initially installed to provide safety.

Hundreds of Palestinian fighters reacted to the Israeli action by storming the British cultural centre in the Gaza Strip and setting fire to it, while angry Palestinian activists stormed into an American centre for teaching English in Gaza City.

In the West Bank town of Ram Allah, the British cultural centre and a branch of HSBC bank were also attacked.

Palestinian security forces said all foreigners still at liberty had now left the Gaza Strip after being gathered at the police headquarters in Gaza City for their own safety.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, abandoned a European tour late on Tuesday, and flew back from Strasbourg as the unrest flared.

Saadat and three other PFLP members had been jailed in Jericho, a prison under US and British supervision since August 2002, after his resistance faction claimed the 2001 killing of the Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.

Kidnappings
Amid security chaos that threatens to deal a further blow to the moribund peace process, one South Korean and two French journalists were taken captives from a luxury Palestinian hotel on the Gaza City seafront.

The two French journalists were identified as Caroline Laurent, a correspondent for Elle magazine, and SIPA agency photographer Alfred Yacobzadeh, who was facing his second hostage ordeal after  being kidnapped in Beirut during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.

The Foreign Ministry in Seoul named the abducted Korean as Yong Tae-young, 41, a correspondent for public broadcaster KBS.

Five other foreigners were kidnapped in Gaza on Tuesday but were released unharmed, while a US professor captured in the West Bank was also later freed.

Gideon Ezra, the Israeli public security minister, said the prison raid was undertaken to prevent the resistance leaders from going free after Abbas repeatedly suggested he would be ready to release them in recent weeks.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned what he described as a "kidnapping operation" and held Britain and the United States responsible for the safety of the PFLP leader, whose predecessor Abu Ali Mustafa was assassinated by Israel in 2001.

PHOTO CAPTION

Israeli security escort Ahmed Saadat, following an operation on the Palestinian jail in the West Bank town of Jericho. (AFP)