(IsraelNN.com)
A source claiming to be from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated with Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group, caused a measure of panic in Israel Wednesday afternoon by announcing that the group was holding a 60-year-old man from Rishon LeTzion.

Police confirmed that a 62-year-old man from the city had been missing for two days, and Israel went to sleep Wednesday night thinking there was a third person in the hands of terrorists.

By Thursday morning, however, police had found Moskowitz's body, near Rishon LeTzion's cemetery.

Police say it is unlikely that Moskowitz was killed, but appears to have died of natural causes. They estimate that the terrorists scanned reports of missing persons and issued the claim of kidnapping to frighten the Israeli public.

Hours earlier, another kidnapping scare took place. Police scrambled to locate a girl near Migdal HaEmek, just east of Nazareth, who called her mother saying she may have accidentally gotten into a vehicle she realized too late was driven by PA Arabs. The phone suddenly went dead.

Less than an hour later, after checkpoints had been set up in the region and police put on high alert, the alert was canceled when the girl walked through the front door of her home – with a dead cellular phone battery and apologies to her family.