American tourist stabbed to death in Israeli forest

Associated Press

JERUSALEM

Israeli police discovered the body of an American woman, hands bound and full of stab wounds, in a rugged forest outside Jerusalem on Sunday, a day after a friend said Arab assailants attacked the pair during a hike in the hills.

The friend, who suffered light wounds but managed to escape, said one of the two attackers approached them with what looked like a long bread knife and carefully removed her Star of David necklace before stabbing her where it had hung.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said authorities were treating the attack as political in nature while not ruling out that it could have been criminal. Police said there were no signs that the wounded women had been sexually assaulted or robbed.

Rosenfeld identified the slain woman as Christine Logan, a 40-year-old American tourist. Her hometown was not released.

Logan’s friend, Kaye Susan Wilson, reported Logan missing Saturday after the two were attacked in a forest near the Jewish farming community of Mata, some 12 miles southwest of Jerusalem. The forest is inside Israel but close to the border with the West Bank and the Palestinian villages of Husan and Wadi Fukin.

Wilson, a naturalized Israeli citizen originally from Britain, managed to escape, although covered in blood and with her hands bound behind her back.