A stampede at a religious festival attended by tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews in northern Israel early yesterday killed at least 44 people and injured about 150, medical officials said. It was one of the country’s deadliest civilian disasters.
The stampede began when large numbers of people thronged a narrow tunnel-like passage during the event, according to witnesses and video footage.
People began falling on top of each other near the end of the walkway, as they descended slippery metal stairs, witnesses said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Avraham Leibe told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that a crush of people trying to descend the mountain caused a “general bedlam” on a slippery metal slope followed by stairs.
“Nobody managed to halt,” he said from a hospital bed. “I saw one after the other fall.”
Video footage showed large numbers of people, most of them black-clad Orthodox men, squeezed in the tunnel.
The Haaretz daily quoted witnesses as saying police barricades had prevented people from exiting quickly.
The stampede occurred during the celebrations of Lag BaOmer at Mount Meron, the first mass religious gathering to be held legally since Israel lifted nearly all restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The country has seen cases plummet since launching one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns late last year.
Lag BaOmer draws tens of thousands of people, most of them Orthodox Jews, each year to honor Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a 2nd-century sage and mystic who is buried there. Large crowds traditionally light bonfires, pray and dance as part of the celebrations.
This year, media estimated the crowd at about 100,000 people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the stampede a “great tragedy” and said that everyone was praying for the victims.
After the stampede, photographs showed rows of wrapped bodies lying on the ground, with dozens of ambulances at the site. By mid-morning yesterday, efforts were still under way to identify victims and connect families with missing relatives.
In the night, cellphone coverage around Mount Meron had collapsed for hours and emergency hotlines were overwhelmed with calls.
In the overwhelmingly Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, officials were working with healthcare workers to connect the families of the missing.
“The picture is slowly becoming clearer,” Kivi Hess, a municipal spokesman, told Channel 13 TV.
The station published the photos of seven boys and teens and asked for help in locating them.
In a race against time, funerals were to be held before sundown yesterday, the start of the Jewish Sabbath when burials do not take place.
In all, 44 people were killed, according to the ZAKA ambulance service. The death toll was on par with the number of people killed in a 2010 forest fire, which is believed to be the deadliest civilian tragedy in the country’s history.
Zaki Heller, spokesman for the Magen David Adom rescue service, said that 150 people had been hospitalized, with six in critical condition.
Heller told Israel Army Radio that “no one had ever dreamed” something like this could happen.
“In one moment, we went from a happy event to an immense tragedy,” he said.
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