Israel: Dozens Injured During Pilgrimage

Tens of thousands of people took part on the night of Thursday to Friday in an annual pilgrimage to northern Israel for the largest public event in the country since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the event was marked by a tragedy: the collapse of the stands left dozens of injured, including twenty in “critical condition”, announced early Friday local rescuers.

“The emergency services of Magen David Adom (MDA, Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross) and ambulances are treating dozens of injured”, including “20 patients in critical condition,” said the spokesman for the MDA, Zaki Heller, in a brief statement. The pilgrimage, which takes place on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer, is held in Meron, around the alleged tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochaï, a 2nd century Talmudist of the Christian era to which we attribute the writing of the Zohar, central work of Jewish mysticism.

More than 100,000 people on site?

Lag Baomer is a joyous holiday marking the memory of the end of a devastating epidemic among the students of a Talmudic school at that time. The authorities had allowed the presence of 10,000 people in the enclosure of the tomb but, according to the organizers, more than 650 buses were chartered in all the country, that is to say at least 30,000 people, while the local press reported 100 000 people on site.

But after midnight the bleachers collapsed, causing a scene of panic and emergency calls to rescuers who deployed helicopters to evacuate the wounded. The Israeli media quickly circulated the shocking image of a dozen inert bodies lined up in plastic bags, surrounded by rescuers on a tarmac track.


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