Briton tells of knife attack that left her friend dead on Israeli hike

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.

After Ms Wilson was discovered, a search was carried out for Ms Logan, who had been reported missing by her friend.

The discovery of the stabbed and bound body prompted speculation that the brutal attack was politically motivated.

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

She said she and her companion had been sitting down, just off the hiking trail, near Mata, south west of Jerusalem, 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, she said.

"I was scared but my friend became hysterical. I told her in English to be quiet and not make noise," she said.

But 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.

It was clear that the two men had come to kill, she added.

Seeing that the knife had not penetrated her heart, she recalled how she then lay still, faking death while listening to her friend die.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said yesterday: "We are aware of the hospitalisation of a British national in Jerusalem. We stand ready to offer consular assistance if requested.

"We are aware of reports of the death of a British woman in Jerusalem. We are urgently looking into these reports."

Yuval Weiss, director of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, said he expected Ms 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.