Last update - 01:49 31/12/2007
Surviving hiker recounts attack in which 2 friends died
The sole survivor of Friday's terror attack on hikers near Hebron, Naama Ohion, is a first-year law student at Ono College in Kiryat Ono. She is the second-oldest daughter of Amram and Simone Ohion, among the veteran settlers of Kiryat Arba.
Ohion, together with two friends who were shot to death by terrorists, Ahikam Amihai and David Rubin, were among the main activists in a group of Kiryat Arba young people known for their volunteer work in Sderot and elsewhere. The group also organized an annual bicycle ride from Kiryat Arba to Jerusalem in memory of Yitzak Boanish, the town's security officer who was killed a few years ago in a terror attack in Hebron, together with the commander of the Israel Defense Forces Hebron Brigade, Dror Weinberg, and others.
Ohion, born and raised in Kiryat Arba, did her national service as a tour educator at Beit Moriah, a religious studies institute for Orthodox young women, in Be'er Sheva.
The hike Ohion, Amihai and Rubin had planned Friday was to have ended at the springs in Wadi Iskha, where there is a cave hundreds of meters long with numerous levels and crawl spaces, inhabited by fruit bats. According to one theory, the cave served as a hideout for the second-century CE rebel against Rome, Bar Kokhba. Amihai, who served for a year with Hebrew University's Cave Research Unit, knew the cave and wanted to show his friends.
Ohion, who refused to speak to the press, was surrounded yesterday by friends and family, staff from the Kiryat Arba Regional Council, her mother, a social worker for the regional council, her father, who works for the Chief Rabbinate, her six brothers and sisters and many friends.
Ohion told her friends that, at the beginning of the hike, an elderly Arab passed them, and they began to recall the story from the 1948 war of an elderly Arab who passed 35 Jewish fighters attempting to reach the besieged communities of the Etzion Bloc. The fighters were later attacked and killed. According to one version of the story, it was the elderly Arab who informed others of their presence.
Ohion told her friends they were making black-humor jokes about the historical incident. "We could never imagine that our hike would end up like theirs," her friends said she told them.
About an hour later, she said, a gray Land Rover appeared and drove toward the three hikers, with a rifle barrel sticking out of the window. A Palestinian sitting in the back seat sprayed the three with bullets. Amihai and Rubin were hit, and Ohion ran to hid behind bushes above the trail. When she heard the shooting die down and the terrorists' vehicle drive away, she came out of her hiding place.
Ohion saw her friends' bodies riddled with bullets. After her attempts to resuscitate them failed, she climbed out of the wadi to a high point where she could use her cell phone, and waited there until help came.