1 The attempted kidnappings of a leading diamond trader and his daughter ended Tuesday when police traced an abductor's car phone and killed him in a shootout.
2 Diamond trader Asher Gertler escaped with only a minor injury from the gunbattle that erupted in the residential Ramat Aviv neighborhood.
3 A search was on for a woman who separately kidnapped Gertler's 18-year-old daughter Keren and held her for several hours in a suburban apartment, said Tel Aviv Police Chief Gabi Last.
4 The kidnappers had demanded dlrs 2 million ransom.
5 Keren Gertler is the granddaughter of Moshe Schnitzer, a former president of Israel's Diamond Exchange and leading figure in the international diamond trade.
6 'This is a very severe development,' said Last, noting that despite ongoing Israeli-Arab violence, ransom kidnappings have been extremely rare here.
7 The episode began in the morning when Keren, an army conscript, was kidnapped as she drove from her Tel Aviv home to a military base and taken to the suburb of Kfar Sava.
8 Several hours later a man, dressed in clothing typical of devout Orthodox Jews and wearing a false beard, kidnapped her father at gunpoint from his home, Last said.
9 Gertler, a former professional soccer player in his 40s, is also a prominent trader on the exchange.
10 He was forced to drive his car around Tel Aviv as the kidnapper used a mobile phone to contact Gertler's wife and demand the ransom.
11 Hanna Gertler told Channel Two TV the kidnapper said he was infected with the AIDS virus and had 'nothing to lose.'
12 Last said police traced the calls and secretly followed the car. At about 3 p.m. the kidnapper suspected something was awry and threatened to kill Gertler, who then head-butted and kicked his abductor and tried to escape, Last said.
13 Six waiting policemen then stormed the car. In the ensuing gunbattle, the kidnapper was killed and Gertler and a policeman were slightly wounded, Last said.
14 'We heard horrible shouting and noise. We were convinced it was a terrorist attack,' said Aviv Nushinski, a teen-aged neighborhood resident.
15 The kidnapper's identity was not immediately known.
16 The other abductor apparently panicked when she lost phone contact with her accomplice. She left Keren Gertler, unharmed, on a country road, and sped off in Gertler's black Renault Cleo.
17 There was no confirmation that the dead kidnapper had the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
18 No statement was available from the freed hostages.

A search was on for a woman who separately kidnapped Gertler ' s 18 - year - old daughter Keren and held her for several hours in a suburban apartment , said Tel Aviv Police Chief Gabi Last .
woman who separately kidnapped
How did they know where to find the daughter? Why were there two kidnappers?