GAZA CITY, March 26, 2007 (AFP) - Journalists in the Gaza Strip staged a 24-hour strike on Monday to demand the release of BBC reporter Alan Johnston as his hostage ordeal entered a third week.

Johnston, who was kidnapped from his car as he was driving home from work in Gaza City on March 12, has now been held for longer than any other hostage since the spate of abductions of foreigners in the Palestinian territory began two years ago.

The longest captivity previously endured by foreign hostages in Gaza was the two-week ordeal last August of two journalists for the US-based Fox News television network.

It was the second time that Palestinian journalists had stopped work in solidarity with Johnston, who has been based in Gaza for the past three years, one of the very few Western reporters to do so amid the mounting lawlessness in the territory since Israel's 2005 pullout.

The 44-year-old is a seasoned reporter with past postings to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

Western governments have expressed increasing frustration with his continued capitivity.

"We are using every channel and opportunity that we can to try to secure his release," British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told MPs last Tuesday.

The same day European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said his officials had also been "doing the utmost" to get Johnston freed.

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