Masked Palestinian gunmen kidnapped a BBC reporter from his car in Gaza City on Monday, Palestinian security officials said. No group claimed responsibility.

The man threw a business card on the street that identified him as Alan Johnston of the BBC, officials said.

Rushdi Abualouf, a senior BBC producer in Gaza, said no other staff were with Johnston when he was driving home from the BBC office in the coastal strip.

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"We lost contact with him at 3:30 P.M. and we have a reason to believe he was kidnapped," Abualouf told Reuters.

"We have no information about the conditions of his captivity and we received no claim of responsibility by any group and we do not know the motives."

"We are aware of reports concerning the whereabouts of BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston. We are currently unable to contact him and are concerned for his safety," the BBC said in a statement.

"We're trying to gather as much information as possible. Alan is a highly experienced and respected reporter," the BBC said.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said, "We are aware of [the] reports and are urgently looking into it."

Security sources said four gunmen carried out the kidnapping, and that a car was found abandoned near Johnston's Gaza City apartment. Police found the lease of the rental car, which stated the vehicle was rented to the BBC.

After the kidnapping, Palestinian security forces set up security checks on roads leading out of Gaza City to the south.

"[The kidnapping] is harmful to our national cause and to the civilized face of our people," Fatah said in a statement.

In Gaza City, a spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic militant group which heads the Palestinian government, condemned Johnston's abduction.

Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam of Hamas described the kidnapping as a "criminal act."

"The security services will ... pursue the criminals and bring them to justice," he told reporters.

"We call on these criminal groups to stop this destruction of our reputation and to let this journalist free," he told The Associated Press.

The news network said Johnston was from Scotland and has been reporting from Gaza for the past three years.

More than a dozen foreign journalists and aid workers have been abducted in Gaza, an area plagued by crime, political violence and lawlessness. Most of the kidnappings have been carried out by gunmen seeking favors from the government or trying to settle scores with rivals.

In most cases, victims have been released unharmed within hours. An exception was the abduction of two Fox News employees last summer who were held for two weeks, prompting many foreign journalists to shy from entering Gaza.

The last foreigner taken hostage was Jaime Razuri, 50, a Peruvian photographer with the French news agency, who was abducted at gunpoint on Jan. 1 and released a week later.

In October, AP photographer Emilio Morenatti was abducted in Gaza City and freed unharmed after 15 hours.