Islamabad; Monitoring Desk – A stampede at a religious festival attended by tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews in northern Israel killed at least 44 people and injured about 150 early Friday, medical officials said. It was one of the country’s deadliest civilian disasters, New York Times and other world media reported on Friday 30 April 2021.
Increase in number of deaths to dozens can not be overruled.
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.
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 ultra-Orthodox men, squeezed in the tunnel. The Haaretz daily quoted witnesses as saying police barricades had prevented people from exiting quickly.
Lag BaOmer draws tens of thousands of people, most of them ultra-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.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the stampede a “great tragedy” and said everyone was praying for the victims.
After the stampede, photos showed rows of wrapped bodies lying on the ground, with dozens of ambulances at the site.
By mid-morning Friday, efforts were still under way to identify victims and connect families with missing relatives. In the night from Thursday to Friday, cell phone coverage around Mount Meron had collapsed for hours and emergency hotlines were overwhelmed with phone calls.
In the overwhelmingly ultra-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 Friday, 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.
