Masked assailants armed with chains swept down from a hill near the Maon Farm outpost south of Hebron and beat two international aid workers escorting Palestinian children to school Wednesday morning, according to the Police and IDF.

An Israeli soldier stands guard as Israeli settlers walk through the Palestinian side of the divided West Bank city of Hebron. Two US Christian pacifists said they had been badly beaten by Jewish settlers in Hebron. (AFP/Hazem Bader)

The assailants, dressed in black and with their faces covered, chased down Kim Lamberty, 44, and Chris Brown, 36, American members of the Christian Peacemakers Team, stationed in the old city of Hebron. The assailants – the victims are convinced they are settlers from Maon – bashed Brown with chains and boots leaving him with a collapsed lung and facial injuries. They also threw Lamberty to the ground and broke her knee and arm. Both remained in the dusty hills for about 30 minutes before being evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Be'ersheva.

"We saw them come down from the Maon ranch," said Lamberty released from Hospital Wednesday afternoon, "the children fled screaming but they let them go. This [attack] was clearly planned. Chris and I both started to run. They caught me quickly, choked me, threw me to the ground and then beat me," she said. Brown received a more severe pummeling and will remain in hospital for several more days.

"I heard them say, 'take her phone,' in English," Lamberty later recalled. After the attackers beat her and moved onto Brown they spotted her trying to call for help. They stripped her of her "fanny pack," and her phone and then fled up the hill, she said. They took nothing from Brown.

An early Judea and Samaria Police investigation categorized the attacks as a "robbery," and dispatched officers of several elite units to comb the area, said Police Spokesman Superintendant Shlomi Sagi. He added that it would likely be difficult to track the assailants down, since they were masked. Diane Jenson, who also escorted the children, but escaped unharmed, said the attackers also carried baseball bats.

The aid workers remain convinced that "only settlers would attack us in this way, in that particular place."

The CPT members had traveled to the Palestinian village of Tawani to escort Palestinian children – upon the children's parents request – along a path restricted to schoolchildren and settlers along, said Brown.

Rabbi Arik Asherman, Director of Rabbis for Human rights quipped, "I don't know how many Palestinian baseball teams there are in that area. It is quite clear that the attackers were settlers." Settlers from the Maon settlement and its satellite outposts are among the more ideological and sometimes radical of the settlement movement.

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