Surviving Tourist Recounts Grisly Murder: 'I Heard Her Making Gurgling Sounds

Miss Wilson told police they had been attacked by two Arab men while hiking in the Mata forest, near the town of Beit Shemesh.

Speaking from her hospital bed, Miss Wilson, a tour guide who emigrated to Israel from the UK in the 1990s, recalled the moment when one of her attackers pulled a serrated knife on her and her friend, who was visiting 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 pulled 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, questioning why they would have been carrying such a knife otherwise.

She recalled how she then lay still. 'I played dead,' she said. 'I saw (the knife) hadn't gone into my heart. My friend was dying, I heard her making gurgling sounds.'

While many speculate the attack was politically motivated, police so no terrorist organization has claimed responsibility.