Gunmen Seize Chief of Red Cross Office in Lebanon

SIDON, Lebanon —  Gunmen kidnaped the Swiss head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ mission in the southern port of Sidon on Thursday, authorities said.

Lebanese police said Peter Winkler, 32, was grabbed by three gunmen from his official car in Sidon’s Hisbeh Square.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The kidnapers, driving a BMW, intercepted Winkler’s white Peugeot, grabbed him, pushed him into their car and sped away, the police spokesman said.

At Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, officials confirmed the abduction and said Winkler’s Lebanese driver was released shortly afterward.

Winkler took up his duties in Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut, about a month ago, said the police spokesman.

He said an emergency meeting was under way between Palestinian guerrilla leaders and the command of the Popular Nasserite Organization militia in Sidon to try to determine Winkler’s whereabouts.

The organization is a leftist Sunni Muslim militia that has been governing Sidon since the 1975 outbreak of Lebanon’s civil war.

In Geneva, spokesman Joerg Bischof said Red Cross delegates have been abducted before in the region but all were released a few hours later. “Let’s hope this will be again the case this time,” he said.

Issam Salem, a spokesman for Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat, said the action was aimed against the recent declaration of the state of Palestine and pledged to find the kidnapers.

“They are not going to get away with it,” he told reporters.

The Swiss ambassador to Lebanon, Dino Sciolli, said the embassy was waiting for a claim of responsibility in Winkler’s kidnaping.

“At this moment we do not know why he was taken,” said Sciolli, based in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Sciolli said about 30 Red Cross officials work in Lebanon and that a few Swiss citizens remain in the Christian sector of the country. All Swiss residents of the Muslim sector have left, he said.

Not including Winkler, 16 foreigners, nine of them Americans, are being held hostage in Lebanon.