A Spanish photographer for Associated Press news agency was kidnapped on Tuesday by gunmen off a Gaza City street, the latest abduction of a Westerner in the increasingly lawless Palestinian territory.
Emilio Morenatti, 37, was seized early morning by four masked gunmen as he left an apartment of the US news agency and bundled into a waiting white Volkswagen, while his driver was restrained.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the abduction.
"The Associated Press is working to find out just what happened to Emilio," Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer said in a statement in New York.
"We are in contact with Palestinian officials and leaders to learn more, and to try and obtain his release. Our main concern now, however, is for his safety.
"It is a sad development when the men and women the world rely on to bring them objective news are subject to such dangers. No cause or motive can justify such senseless action," Curley said.
In Madrid, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos pledged to use all his contacts and influence to free the photographer "as soon as possible".
"I have had several conversations, with among others (President) Mahmud Abbas, and with top Palestinian political and security officials," Moratinos told Spanish reporters.
The Spanish consulate in Jerusalem had sent two officials to Gaza, where security officials were interviewing people who had recently been in contact with Morenatti.
The Palestinian leadership condemned the abduction.
"We demand the kidnappers release him immediately," a spokesman for the Hamas, Ghazi Hamad, told AFP.
"We strongly condemn this kidnapping and we are doing all we can to free him. This kidnapping is in contradiction to our national interests and blackens the image of Palestinians."
Hamas did not know who carried out the kidnapping nor their motivations, Hamad said.
In Ramallah, Abbas's office also blasted the abduction.
"We condemn this kidnapping and we call for the kidnappers to release him immediately," said a statement. "The Palestinian security services have begun searching to find him."
Morenatti, from Jerez, Spain, has often worked in Gaza and the West Bank during his Jerusalem posting, and had spent more than a year prior to that covering the war in Afghanistan for AP.
In Spain, his brother Miguel Angel told Cadena Ser radio that Morenatti "loved his work" although "he'd rather had enough of Israel".
"He wanted a change of scene, to go somewhere else, to Africa for example," Miguel Angel said, adding that he had spoken with his brother a few days ago.
Morenatti's abduction is the latest in a string of Westerner kidnappings in the Palestinian territories, which have been plunged into an unprecedented financial and political crisis since Hamas formed a government in March.
Bloody clashes between supporters of ruling Hamas and Abbas's Fatah faction, increased activity by criminal groups, a nearly two-month strike by
civil servants, a Western aid freeze, and a continuing Israeli offensive in Gaza have all but paralysed the Palestinian leadership.
Westerners have previously been kidnapped by armed groups in Gaza as bargaining chips in demands on the Palestinian Authority and were usually released unharmed within days.
But in August, two journalists working for the US-based Fox News television network spent 13 days in captivity in an abandoned garage in Gaza after being kidnapped by a previously unknown group, the Holy Jihad Brigades.
The group had demanded the release of all Muslim prisoners in American jails, the first time that Gaza kidnappers had made a demand on a foreign government.
The pair, American Steve Centanni and his freelance cameraman, New Zealander Olaf Wiig, were released on August 27 after being forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam, a tape of which was released hours before their release.
On October 12, another previously unknown Palestinian group, the Ansar al-Suna movement, said it had taken hostage a US student in the northern West Bank town of Nablus.
The student was freed later in the day by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group loosely affiliated to Abbas's Fatah party.