Female tourists attacked, one killed, near Jerusalem

The body of a female tourist has been found near a road outside Jerusalem after her friend, who was also attacked, reported her missing.

Israeli police on Sunday found the dead body of a US woman who went missing near Jerusalem, and were investigating whether she was the target of a terror attack, a spokesman said.

The body was discovered after her British friend was found by passers-by on Saturday night, tied up and suffering multiple stab wounds.

"We discovered this morning, near Beit Shemesh, the body of a woman who disappeared on Saturday," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

"The woman who was murdered was from America, she had an American passport. The second woman, who is in hospital, is from England."

The British woman was identified as Kaye Susan Wilson and her American friend, Christine Logan. Both women were in their 40s, Rosenfeld said.

On Saturday, police said they were unsure whether the attack was criminal or political in nature.

But on Sunday, Rosenfeld said the investigation was focused on the assumption the attack was "nationalistically motivated" based on "the fact that they were tied up and the way that they were stabbed".

"We are still looking at all directions in the investigation, but the main direction now is that it was a nationalistically motivated attack," he said.

Wilson was found around dusk near the village of Mata, west of Jerusalem and inside Israel. She told police she and Logan had been attacked by "two Arabs," and she had managed to escape.

"Her hands were tied, she was stabbed in the upper part of her body, she claimed that two Arabs stabbed her," Rosenfeld said.

Wilson was evacuated in moderate to serious condition at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital.

By Sunday, hospital director Yuval Weiss said she was "out of danger but would stay under surveillance in the intensive care department for several days".