GAZA, Nov. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Israel urged its citizens on Sunday to refrain from entering the Gaza Strip for security reasons.

    An Israeli army spokesman raised the warning in a statement distributed on Sunday that all Israeli citizens should refrain from entering the Gaza Strip for security reasons while urging Israelis, including Israeli journalists, to leave the coastal strip as immediately as possible.

    The statement also warned Israeli citizens against traveling to several Arab countries, saying the government had received intelligence that some organizations are planning kidnappings of Israelis for exchange of Arab and Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

    But the statement did not specify the names of the Arab countries, nor giving further details on the potential danger.

    Israel completed withdrawing from the entire Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank in September, the first time that the Jewish state gives up land it seized in the 1967 Mideast War. Enditem