Missing in Gaza: Whereabouts of kidnapped reporter remain a mystery

Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent in Gaza who was kidnapped at gunpoint 18 days ago, has been held longer than any of the other foreign journalists seized in a series of abductions over the past two years.

Mr Johnston, who was due to finish his three-year tour next week and is the only Western journalist permanently based in Gaza, was forced from his rented car at gunpoint as he drove home from his Gaza City office in the late afternoon.

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While the BBC has received indirect assurances that he is alive and well, it has had no direct contact with the kidnappers.

There is speculation that a large Gaza family with criminal as well as shifting factional connections carried out the kidnap, but no-one has admitted responsibility yet.

Senior BBC colleagues of Mr Johnston, including Simon Wilson, the BBC's Middle East bureau chief, have made concerted appeals to Palestinian leaders including Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian Prime Minister, to secure his release. Both promised that everything possible is being done to free Mr Johnston, who is 44.

Palestinian journalists in Gaza have held two 24-hour strikes over Mr Johnston's kidnap and have set up a protest tent in Gaza City displaying pictures of the captive reporter. Shuhdi Kashef of the Gaza journalists' union has promised protests will continue until he is freed. Civil Society groups throughout Gaza have also registered strong condemnations of the abduction.

BBC staff have held meetings in London, and last week Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, described Mr Johnston as "one of those amazing BBC people who make extraordinary sacrifices and take considerable risks because they believe a story needs to be told".

A week after his capture, Mr Johnston's father, Graham, issued a televised appeal. He said at the family home in Argyll, Scotland, that his son's seizure was "no way to treat a friend of the Palestinian people, and all I can say to the men who are holding Alan is: please let my son go, now, today".

Most of the previous kidnaps of foreigners in Gaza lasted for only a few hours - or in the case of Kate Burton, the British aid worker kidnapped at the end of 2005, for three days. But since then, two Fox reporters were held for two weeks last summer before being released unharmed.

An experienced reporter, Mr Johnstonworked in Afghanistan, where there has also been a demonstration in his support.