British woman stabbed in Jerusalem

A BRITISH woman has been found bound with her hands behind her back and bleeding from multiple stab wounds outside the Israeli city of Jerusalem.

The dead body of her friend was also found, bound and repeatedly stabbed, Israeli police said.

The British woman, named by sources as Kaye Wilson, told police they had been attacked by two Arab men while hiking in a nearby forest. She said she managed to escape her assailants by pretending to be dead and then fled to a parking area where other people alerted authorities.

The nationality of the dead woman, identified in the Israeli press as Christine Logan, has been given alternatively as British and American.

Yuval Weiss, director of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, told media he expected Wilson to be released in a few days.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said he could not confirm any details about the dead woman or her friend.

Speaking from her hospital bed, she recalled the fear that gripped her when one of her attackers pulled a serrated knife on her and her friend, who was a tourist in the Middle East country.

She told Israeli newspaper Haaretz she and her companion had been sitting down, just off the hiking trail, when the two men approached and asked them in Hebrew if they had any water.

She tried to get them to leave, she said, feeling that “something wasn’t right”, and the two women then headed back towards the trail.

“Suddenly I noticed them,” she went on. “It all happened so fast. They came and attacked us.”

One of the men whipped out a long knife, which looked like a bread knife with a serrated edge. The men then began to stab both women.

“I had a Star of David hanging on a chain around my neck. He took it off like a gentleman and then turned me around and stabbed in the place where the Star of David had been,” she said.