2 TEEN GIRLS NEARLY KIDNAPPED IN WEST BANK

Two teens nearly kidnapped in W. Bank (JPost)
Two teenage girls escaped a kidnapping attempt Thursday afternoon at a hitchhiking post at the Rehalim Junction not far from the West Bank city of Nablus. The girls sustained light injuries and the three Palestinian kidnappers, from Jenin, were apprehended by security forces.

As the two girls sat on the curb and waited for a ride, a white Chevrolet Cavalier, carrying three Palestinians from Jenin, pulled over and tried to force the two into the car at gunpoint.

One of the girls, Emuna Shahar, a 15-year-old Jerusalem resident, fought against the men, who tried taking her into the vehicle by force. Shahar suffered light injuries, including blows to her face, while struggling tooth and nail to stay out of the vehicle. Speaking to reporters a few hours after the attack, Shahar said that the assailants beat her while she screamed out "Shema Yisrael," certain that they would kill her.

The other hitchhiker, Hadas Mann, 14, of Beit El, managed to escape without injury. She told reporters that she crawled into nearby bushes and stopped moving so she wouldn't be noticed.

"It all happened too fast. It was scary," she said, "I prayed and prayed and prayed to God." Mann succeeded in placing a telephone call to the police, saying that she thought that her friend was being kidnapped.

Fortunately for Shahar, a Nahal Brigade company commander who had just passed the intersection observed what was happening through his rear-view window, and immediately made a U-turn. When the three would-be kidnappers saw the car with the officer approaching them, they fled the scene.

The officer picked up Shahar, and she told him that Mann had been kidnapped. The two called the police emergency hotline to report the kidnapping. The officer pursued the Palestinian vehicle as police and IDF forces set up roadblocks. Four detectives from the Samaria Subdistrict heard reports of the incident over the police radio and apprehended the fleeing car at a roadblock on Route 60 north of Shilo 10 minutes after the incident occurred. Upon searching the vehicle, the detectives recovered a loaded handgun. When Mann was not found in the vehicle, she was searched for at the site of the incident and found unharmed.