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A stampede at a religious festival is Israel this morning killed at least 45 people and left some 150 others injured.
Israeli investigators are examining exactly how the crush happened at Israel’s Mount Meron. In the meantime, here’s what we know so far:
Multiple US citizens were among those killed and injured at a religious festival in Israel overnight, a State Department spokesperson said Friday.
“We can confirm that multiple U.S. citizens were among the casualties,” the spokesperson said, but did not provide details on numbers of wounded or how many were killed.
“Out of respect for the families at this difficult time, we have no further comment,” the spokesperson said.“We offer our sincerest condolences to the families and loved ones of those injured and who perished in the tragedy at Mt. Meron during the Lag Ba’omer commemorations,” they said.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke with his Israeli counterpart on Friday to offer his condolences on the deadly incident at the religious festival at Mount Meron.
Blinken “conveyed his heartfelt condolences for the lives lost, and he extended his wishes for those injured to recover quickly,” a State Department readout said. “The Secretary noted that the United States stands ready to assist Israel during this difficult time.”
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman spoke to Israel’s Ambassador to the US about the tragedy as well.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer addressed the tragic situation in Northern Israel saying they’re trying to figure out if any New Yorkers or Americans were among the confirmed dead in the massive stampede yesterday.
US Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke with his Israeli counterpart on Friday to offer his condolences on the deadly incident at the religious festival at Mount Meron.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman spoke to Israel’s ambassador to the US about the tragedy as well.
President Joe Biden offered condolences to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday after a crush during a religious celebration at Mount Meron killed at least 45 worshippers Friday.
A crush during a a religious celebration at Israel’s Mount Meron killed dozens of people Friday and injured more than 100 others.
If you’re just reading in now, here’s what we know about the deadly crush:
Jewish worshipers lingered at the holy site of Mount Meron on Friday trying to understand how the disaster unfolded.
The scene of the disaster is a stadium-style seating area used by Orthodox worshipers to light bonfires.
The ramp leading down to the steps remains rather slippery following reports of water being sprayed at fleeing worshipers.
A middle railing stretching down the ramp was left completely bent following the stampede.
Eyewitness accounts from the night before are also helping to piece together the frenzy that ensued.
“The passageway [where people were walking] was flowing fine, but suddenly everything stopped. Everyone was crammed on top of each other and no one understood why. I raised my head and saw policemen blocking the passageway. We shouted ‘people are dying in there,’” a festival-goer named Zohar told Israel’s Channel 12 news.
“People lost the color in their faces,” Zohar said. “Then, bodies began falling at my feet. I tried to call for help, and slowly rescue forces arrived. There were some people who [rescuers] did not even try to revive. People were lying on my feet, shouting ‘Help me.’”
Another eyewitness named Tami was also critical of the police response.
“I was standing on the roof top there. They were spraying water because it was very hot, then they started slipping over, ten people slipping, then another ten, and another ten. I am still shocked and traumatised by it. I can’t believe what I saw. They tried to move, to run away. They tried to get some space to breathe, but the police wouldn’t let them,” Tami told Kan News.
“I know the police were doing their job, and didn’t realize what was happening behind them, but in the end, the result was unbelievable.”
The Mount Meron stampede is “one of the worst disasters that Israel has experienced” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to the site.
The stampede took place during celebrations for the religious festival of Lag B’Omer in the early hours of Friday and has so far claimed the lives of 45 people, according to the Israeli Health Ministry.
“There were heart-breaking scenes here,” Netanyahu said, referencing distressing images of “people who were crushed to death, including children.”
A “large portion” of the victims have still not been identified, Netanyahu said, urging people to “desist from spreading rumors on social media because this will break the families’ hearts.”
Netanyahu declared this coming Sunday “as a day of national mourning” and asked people to “come together for the sake of the families and pray for the well-being of the wounded.
The Israeli authorities had advised participants not to make the annual pilgrimage to the town of Meron this year in light of Covid-19 risks. Netanyahu said a “thorough investigation” would be conducted to “ensure a disaster like this does not happen again.
The prime minister commended the efforts of the “very fast police rescue and operation” adding that we “owe them great thanks for preventing a much bigger disaster.”
Tens of thousands of people gathered on Mount Meron on Thursday for Lag B’Omer, an annual Jewish religious festival marking the anniversary of the death of an influential rabbi who is believed to be buried there.
But the celebration turned into tragedy early on Friday, when at least 45 people were killed in a crush.
Here’s a look at some of the scenes from Mount Meron from the last 24 hours:
Scores of buses have been steadily making their way to Mount Meron to ferry people away from the disaster that unfolded during the Lag Ba-Omer festival.
At one point on Friday, there was a line of buses that stretched back around 10 kilometers (6 miles), all waiting to travel up the mountain.
From the early hours of Friday morning to Friday afternoon, the buses were completely packed, demonstrating just how many people were in attendance at the event.
Around 100,000 people are thought to have gathered for the annual Lag Ba-Omer festival this year, according to Dov Maisel, vice president of operations of the volunteer-based emergency organization United Hatzalah, who added that those numbers aren’t unusual. Up to 400,000 people had attended in past years, he said.
Other attendees have started to make their way down by foot.
The Lag B’Omer festival is an annual Jewish religious holiday marking the anniversary of the death of an influential rabbi who died some 19 centuries ago.
It is the largest annual public event held in Israel.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was a 2nd century sage and scholar who many maintain is the author of the Zohar, the seminal work which serves as the foundational text in Jewish mysticism.
Every year, Orthodox Jews travel in huge numbers to the town of Meron and celebrate by lighting bonfires and singing and dancing on Mount Meron, where the rabbi is believed to be buried, until the early hours of the morning.
Another key tradition sees parents bringing boys who have reached the age of 3 into Shimon Bar Yochai’s tomb for their very first haircut.
The festival was largely curtailed last year due to coronavirus restrictions.
Despite calls from the Israeli health ministry advising people not to come, huge crowds still flocked to Meron this year.
Usually only Orthodox Jews make the pilgrimage to Meron, although secular Jews across Israel participate by lighting bonfires.
Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Friday that most people who had been taken to hospital after the crush at Mount. Meron “have been released and will be released during the day.”
Speaking at Ziv hospital in the northern city of Safed, where 54 people injured in the crush had been sent, Edelstein said that the quick response by emergency services was “not a coincidence” as it followed Thursday’s annual exercises which prepared them for large scale disaster.
“When people were called to the hospital in the middle of the night, they were ready,” Edelstein said.
Most of the injuries were broken bones resulting from the crush of the crowd, he said.
Edelstein added that the health ministry had passed on “very clear instructions” regarding coronavirus risks at the religious gathering to the police and the ministry of religious affairs.
Israel’s emergency service director General Eli Bin said on Friday that the Mount Meron crush is “one of the most difficult civil disasters the State of Israel has ever known.”
“It is difficult to contain the magnitude of the disaster,” Bin, who heads Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service, added in a Friday statement.
Following the incident that killed dozens, the MDA provided medical care to 150 people, the statement said.
Bin said a complex security operation had been in place in preparation for the religious festival and that on Thursday morning they had participated in a large exercise led by police.
“Yesterday morning we participated in a large exercise led by the Israel Police and did not imagine that we would find ourselves in such a complex and difficult event. All the forces acted quickly and with dedication in a very difficult and complex arena, in coordination and cooperation with all the factors,” Bin said in the statement.
Every year, MDA forces are stationed at Mount Meron for the Lag B’Omer festival, with hundreds of ambulances, intensive care vehicles, motorcycles, ATVs and unique rescue vehicles and clinics adapted to secure the event, the MDA said.
Calls began to arrive on Friday morning at 12:49 a.m. local time for distressed casualties near the “Toldot Aharon” celebration, near the rabbi’s tomb in Meron, the statement said.
A “multi-casualty incident” was immediately declared and MDA forces from around the country were deployed, the statement concluded.
Israeli attorney general Avichai Mandelblit said Friday that a probe has been opened into the Meron disaster, and that authorities are investigating whether there was any criminality attributable to the police.
“It was decided to start an investigation immediately as to whether there are criminal suspicions on the part of police officers as part of the disaster in Meron,” the statement read.
Shimon Lavie, northern commander of Israel Police, said earlier on Friday that he took overall responsibility for the crush.
“We are dealing with a lot of media and video which are not based in fact and have no connection to the reality. We are collecting evidence to get to the truth,” Lavie said.
Lavie added that “police were saving people’s lives, while they were also dealing with this complicated incident.”
Mandelblit said Friday that Israel Police will not at this stage collect testimonies from the officers involved in the incident as part of the ongoing investigation.
The attorney general and the acting state attorney will conduct additional situation assessments and make appropriate decisions based on the progress of the investigation, led by the justice ministry’s police internal investigations department.
The National Center of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) in Tel Aviv said that they are prepared to receive the dead and are able to receive and assist families who will coming to identify their loved ones.
The institute added that social workers from the relevant ultra-Orthodox authorities and Yiddish speakers will be present, according to a statement posted by the health ministry.
The institute said it is working to complete the identification process as quickly as possible and with increased staffing, adding that the process of transferring the bodies to the institute has already begun.
Volunteer EMT Kalanit Taub, a first responder at the scene, told CNN there was “non-stop people to care for” in the wake of the crush.
Taub described place where the crush occurred as a “horrific scene,” and said that there were people giving CPR everywhere she looked.
She added that a paramedic next to her was declaring person after person dead.
Taub, who is also a member of a psychological trauma treatment unit, said she also took care of nearly 100 people in the aftermath of Friday’s incident in addition to performing CPR.
“I was walking around the site for a number of hours afterwards and there were people on the side crying or just staring into space and I helped them process what they were dealing with,” she said.
“They didn’t know how to cope with what they had just seen,” she said.
Taub recalled how the religious gathering went from a joyous occasion to a disaster very quickly.
“In seconds it went from a site where people were singing and joyous, to mass chaos, pandemonium and death,” she said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted about the crush on Friday morning, describing it a “huge disaster.”
“We are all praying for the well-being of the injured. I want to strengthen the hand of those carrying out rescue efforts and who are operating on site,” Netanyahu said.
Lazar Hyman, vice president of United Hatzalah, said it was one of the worst tragedies that he had ever experienced. “I have not seen anything like this since I entered into the field of emergency medicine back in 2000,” said Hyman.
Israeli investigators are examining what caused a crush that killed at least 44 worshipers at a mass religious gathering in Mount Meron overnight.
Thousands of worshipers had crowded onto the mountain burial site to celebrate the Lag B’Omer holiday, an annual event to pay homage to second-century Mishnaic sage Rabbi Shim Bar Yochai.
But in the early hours of Friday morning, singing and dancing erupted into chaos, as a huge wave of people trapped others beneath them, including children, witnesses told Reuters.
“We were going to go inside for the dancing and stuff and all of the sudden we saw paramedics from MADA running by, like mid-CPR on kids, and then one after the other started coming out,” said Shlomo Katz.
Another attendee, Wice Israel, said he saw people falling to the ground. “It was crowded and there were there around 60,000 to 70,000 people, no place to move, and people started to fall to the ground, a lot fell to the ground,” he said.
Dov Maisel from the volunteer-based emergency organization United Hatzalah told CNN that an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people had been on the mountain.
He said thousands of people tightly packed in a small area had fallen down a staircase and crushed each other. “Overall they usually control the crowd, but at a certain point at the peak the crowd became too tight,” Maisel said.
