Rescued hikers to be questioned by police

Police said Thursday they would question two hikers saved in a large rescue operation from a flooded Judean desert riverbed a day earlier.

The backpackers, aged 22 and 23, became trapped by flash floods in the area as a major winter storm walloped much of the country Wednesday. They were extracted by an IDF unit in an eight-hour operation on Wednesday night.

The water levels at the river climbed 1.5 meters (5 feet) due to the heavy rains.

But police said the “irresponsible” decision to hike as large storms pounded the area and without prior coordination with the IDF would be investigated, and summoned the two for questioning, the Ynet news outlet reported. The hikers initially gave the security forces fake names, police said.

At least 50 emergency rescue workers were deployed to Nahal Og, roughly 15 miles east of Jerusalem, to save the two backpackers, Channel 2 reported. The complex operation took several hours due to storms in the area.

A helicopter from the IDF’s 669 search and rescue unit managed to reach the two despite the inclement weather.

The two were airlifted to Rehovot’s Kaplan Hospital in good condition, and have since been released.

In a separate incident on Thursday, 14 students were extracted from a minibus on a flooded Ashkelon street. No one was injured in the incident.

“The minibus driver’s flawed judgement is what caused the problematic incident,” it said, according to Ynet. “The students were rescued quickly and were not harmed.”

The heavy rains across the country began to taper off on Thursday, after nearly three days of wintry storms and floods, and is expected to stop on Friday.