Two Italian Red Cross representatives kidnapped in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday were freed some ten hours later after a joint operation by Italian and Palestinian secret services.
The two men - Gianmarco Onorato, 63, and Claudio Moroni, 36 - were unharmed after their experience and spent the night in the Palestinian National authority building in Gaza, the Red Cross said.
"We are very satisfied because a dramatic situation was resolved happily," Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said late on Tuesday night, shortly after news of the men's release broke.
There were few details of the secret service operation which led to Onorato and Moroni being set free. The kidnapping, not believed to have been for political reasons, was believed to have been quickly followed by negotiations between the kidnappers and Palestinian security forces.
Italian Red Cross chief Massimo Barra was scheduled to give a press conference at 11.30.
The two kidnap victims were travelling in a Palestinian taxi to the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis on Tuesday when their vehicle was stopped by an armed gang in a car.
The gang forced the Italians out of the taxi, bundled them into their own vehicle and then drove off.
The CRI said it was Onorati and Moroni's first day in the Gaza Strip and that they had been due to remain until Wednesday. The pair were working on a humanitarian project set up by the CRI and the Palestinian and Israeli authorities aimed at helping young conflict victims overcome their trauma.
They were expected to meet Palestinian President Abu Mazen on Wednesday morning, then probably fly back to Italy later in the day.
There was relief in Italy that the kidnapping, which was on the front pages of newspapers on Wednesday, had been resolved so quickly "I was worried but I hadn't lost hope," said Claudio Moroni's mother from their home near the northeastern city of Varese.
Cases of foreign kidnappings have risen in the Palestinian-administered Gaza Strip over the past few months.
The last abduction was in August, when an American reporter and a New Zealand national were seized. All the cases were resolved quickly, often within hours, with the victims released unharmed.
The last Italian to be kidnapped in the region was Lorenzo Cremonesi, a war correspondent for Italian daily Corriere della Sera who was briefly held captive by militants in September 2005.
Cremonesi's ordeal lasted three-and-a-half hours before he was released unharmed and without the payment of a ransom. According to the journalist, his abduction was a political gesture aimed at the Palestinian administration.
