Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam says "things are going in a positive direction" as a wide range of people seek the release of New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig and American television reporter Steve Centanni.

But the minister, part of the Hamas-controlled cabinet in the Palestinian government last night offered no details.

"Efforts and contacts are being made to guarantee the safety and bring about the release of the two guests of Palestine," Siyam told reporters outside a Gaza City mosque.

He said the contacts were made with major Palestinian militant groups, all of whom denied kidnapping the journalists or knowing where they were being held.

"There are first promising signs," Siyam said, but did not elaborate

The statement was the first on efforts by the government to free Centanni and Wiig, kidnapped on August 14 while they were parked were parked near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services.

But the men's employer, Fox TV and American diplomats have said they hope the deadline set by the kidnappers for tonight (NZ time) will be extended, according to Time magazine, which reported the kidnap had more to do with internal Palestinian and Islamic militant politics than with striking a blow against the US.

The journalists were snatched by gunmen 10 days before a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades claimed responsibility for the abduction and called for the release of all Muslim prisoners in the United States by 9pm today (NZ time).

But Time dismissed the demand as a stalling tactic and quoted un-named Palestinian security sources as saying the Holy Jihad Brigades was formed specially to stage a high-publicity kidnapping of foreigners, in the hope of attracting cash from the Lebanese militia group, Hizbollah, which recently started to bankroll a wide array of Palestinian groups in Gaza and the West Bank.

It said the people in the Holy Jihad Brigades were a splinter group of gunmen from the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

"Arafat's weak and distracted successor, (Palestinian President) Mahmoud Abbas, has failed to rein them in, and they now operate inside the West Bank territories and Gaza as lawless vigilantes," it said.

Some were still on the payroll of Gaza's Preventive Security Police, a fiefdom of the Fatah's bosses.

"Suspicion has fallen on three groups in particular: Al Nasser Salaheddin, Abu Reesh Brigade, Abu Rees Brigade, and a spin-off of al Qasa Brigades based in the Gaza town of Khan Younis, near where the TV crew was captured at gunpoint," the magazine reported.

The kidnapping was intended to discredit both president Abbas -- who told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he could free the pair of journalists -- and Palestinian prime minister Ismael Haniyeh, whose Hamas-led government has tried to crack down on Fatah splinter groups' roaming death squads and extortion rackets in Gaza.