The poor oppressed Palestinians are at it again: Palestinian group says it has kidnapped US student in West Bank.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - A previously unknown Palestinian militant group has claimed to have kidnapped an American student in the occupied West Bank.

The group, Ansar Al-Suna, faxed a copy of the student’s passport and his student identification card to security officials in the West Bank, a Palestinian security official told AFP.

The group said it had snatched the student, who was named as Michael Phillips, in the town of Nablus on Wednesday.

The US consulate in east Jerusalem said it was looking into the report.

If the Michael Phillips who wrote this article for Islamofascist site aljazeerah.info is the same person, another useful idiot may be having a close encounter with reality: Israeli Occupation Terrorist Forces Reinvade Nablus, Kill One Member of the Resistance.

UPDATE at 10/11/06 1:28:51 pm:

More information at the Jerusalem Post, where they identify Phillips as a worker for Project Hope: Group says it kidnapped US student.

The IDF stressed that entering Nablus, as well as other Palestinian cities in the West Bank, was dangerous for foreigners as well as for Israelis, who were forbidden by law from entering Palestinian territory.

“People risk their lives when entering these places,” one officer said. “Nablus is a dangerous city, it is the terror capital of the West Bank and foreigners should think carefully before traveling there.”

International Director of Project Hope Jeremy Wideman told The Jerusalem Post that it was not certain that Philips had been kidnapped. Philips, he said, was in his early twenties, was from New Orleans, of Italian descent and had been in Nablus for close to half-a-year teaching English to Palestinian schoolchildren.

“We don’t even know if he has been taken,” he said. “He has not been around for one day and it could be that he just went away for the day.”

As to the IDF warnings not to enter Nablus, Wideman said it was actually the military that made the West Bank city dangerous.

“Generally the city is welcoming and safe,” he said. “It is certainly safer than Latin American cities. We will need to wait to see what happens.”

UPDATE at 10/11/06 3:38:49 pm:

Hmm. I’m getting a faint whiff of a piscine aroma about this story. Al-Aqsa: We freed kidnapped US youth.

Dozens of armed gunmen from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades stormed the Nablus apartment where kidnapped US citizen Michael Leighton Phillips was being held and freed the American youth.
 
Phillips was initially taken to the home of a PLO Executive Committee member’s home, where he was surrounded by dozens of media crews.
 
Phillips spoke to Ynet immediately after his release and said he wasn’t disappointed in the Palestinian people, “even though I can’t exactly say that they treated me kindly.”

According to Phillips, he was held by his captors for 48 hours. “I don’t know who the kidnappers where or what they wanted, but I know who put me in the taxi that I was kidnapped from,” he said.
 
He refused to describe how the kidnappers treated him, and only said: “I can’t say they treated me politely or kindly.”

UPDATE at 10/11/06 4:07:31 pm:

That aroma is coming from the ISM; Jeremy Wildeman (misspelled above) is also a Canadian “delegate” for the International Solidarity Movement: ISM Canada - English - Delegates’ Pages. (Hat tip: LC La Wedgie.)