JERUSALEM — A yeshiva student and aspiring soldier was found stabbed to death in the West Bank early Thursday, setting off a large-scale hunt for the assailant by the Israeli Army, which was treating the killing as a terrorist attack.

The army sent in reinforcements and canceled all furloughs for troops stationed in Judea and Samaria, as Israel calls the West Bank, both to aid the search and as a precaution in case of an escalation of violence, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an army spokesman.

The victim, Pvt. Dvir Sorek, who would have turned 19 next Tuesday, vanished while returning from a trip to Jerusalem to buy gifts for his teachers, the authorities said. He was found with multiple stab wounds in the Gush Etzion region, north of Hebron, the army said, between the settlements of Migdal Oz and Efrat.

Investigators were pursuing the possibility that the killing had resulted from a botched abduction.

Large numbers of soldiers, police officers and other security forces were searching for the attacker in Beit Fajr, the nearest Palestinian village.