GAZA CITY, 29 September 2004 — An Israeli Arab who works as a producer for the TV network CNN was released yesterday, a day after he was kidnapped at gunpoint, relatives and Palestinian police said.

Riyad Ali was removed from a CNN van on a busy Gaza street Monday, when Palestinians stopped the broadcast vehicle and asked for him by name. They removed him from the van and took him away to an undisclosed location.

Ali’s father, Said told a group of reporters outside his home that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat won his son’s release.

“Yasser Arafat made every effort, he promised, the word of a man, he told me ‘I will not rest and not sleep until Riyad Ali is freed and back home with his family,’ and when I spoke to him now he told me ‘I promised, I freed,” the father said.

CNN confirmed the release, saying Ali had been turned over to Palestinian police. A police official also said Ali was free.

The motive for the kidnapping was not immediately clear. Palestinian groups denied involvement.

Earlier, a senior Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials had reached an agreement with the kidnappers and the journalist. He did not elaborate.

Speaking on CNN shortly after Ali’s release, his colleague Ben Wedeman said the network had received a video tape in which the kidnapping appeared to have been carried out by members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei marked the anniversary of uprising against Israel yesterday by calling on both sides to rethink tactics that have brought four years of bloodshed.

He urged Palestinians to reflect on past mistakes as well as successes but proposed few specific changes and did not repeat previous criticism of Palestinian bombings in Israel. He accused the Jewish state of blocking peace.

Qorei cited Israel’s killing of Palestinian militants abroad, such as Sunday’s car bombing of a Hamas leader in Damascus for which Israel has not officially claimed responsibility, as an example of “crazy” policies.

“This anniversary should make us all - the people, the factions, and the Palestinian Authority - reconsider the past four years, where we went wrong and where we went right,” Qorei, a moderate, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In the West Bank violence, meanwhile, troops killed two people in the Jenin refugee camp, Palestinians said. One was a 46-year-old man with a history of mental illness, shot while wandering in a dark section of the camp in violation of an Israeli curfew’

Later yesterday, Palestinians said soldiers on patrol shot and killed an 18-year-old as he was sitting in front of his house. The military had no comment.