Soldier accused of making prank call claiming abduction

A soldier has been detained for questioning after being accused of making a prank call to an emergency dispatcher claiming he had been kidnapped, police say.

The caller to the southern Israeli emergency hotline mumbled and was heard saying “they kidnapped us,” sparking Beersheba police to launch an emergency search operation and investigation.

Police say the person who made the call was tracked to a soldiers’ rooming house in the city, and he was detained “after it became clear that he had been  pulling a prank.”

The stunt comes less than a week after Palestinian gunmen abducted the body of an Israeli man killed in a traffic collision from a Jenin hospital.

In 2014, an Israeli teen kidnapped in the West Bank along with two others managed to make an emergency call and tell dispatchers he had been taken, before being killed by a Hamas terrorist, but the call was initially dismissed as a prank.