Jerusalem, Undefined: An Israeli high school student was killed and two dozen other people were wounded on Monday by a suspected leftover Hezbollah bomb as they hiked near the Lebanese border, officials said.
The Israeli military, which dispatched helicopters to the scene, said an initial review showed the blast was likely caused by an unexploded munition from the Lebanese militant group.
The explosive, which was probably a cluster bomb from a round of fighting three years ago, went off in the hands of a student who picked it up, Israeli police said.
Police said that school authorities had received the green light for the outdoor excursion in the region, which Hezbollah has hit in successive rounds of fighting as Israel pounds the Iran-backed group.
Israeli authorities said the victim was 14 or 15 years old.
Israeli strike kills two people in Gaza, medics say
The Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency services said 24 other people were wounded in the blast, including two teenage boys who were seriously hurt with shrapnel injuries.
MDA emergency medical technician David Radko said that upon arriving at the scene, he saw that “casualties were scattered along the road, some holding and trying to help their injured friends”.
“Some even applied tourniquets to their friends to stop the bleeding,” he was quoted as saying in a statement.
The MDA said the injured were transported to three medical centres in northern Israel.
AFP footage from Ziv Hospital in the city of Safed showed paramedics wheeling the injured out of ambulances and into the facility on stretcher trolleys.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited some of the wounded students at Rambam hospital in Haifa, together with Education Minister Yoav Kisch, his office said on Monday evening.
A video shared by the office showed the premier at the bedside of a 14-year-old injured in the neck by shrapnel.
– ‘Dangers that cannot be ignored’ –
The incident injured both students and staff from a religious high school as they were on an outing, the municipality of the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha said.
It comes ahead of October 27 elections in which Netanyahu is facing a tough race for a new term.
The opposition is accusing him of not doing enough to ensure Israelis’ security after three years of war, despite recent quiet from Gaza, which Israel has devastated since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.
Gadi Eisenkot, who is the principal challenger in the elections, said he was “praying together with all Israelis for the swift recovery of the wounded” and wished strength to rescue teams.
Yair Golan, head of the centre-left Democrats party, said three years of periodic fighting with Hezbollah had contaminated Israel’s northern border area with “dangers that cannot be ignored”.
He called for “a thorough and comprehensive inspection of the hiking areas in the north”, and for removing unexploded ordnance.
Earlier this year, Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war with rocket fire at Israel in solidarity with its backer Iran, which was attacked by Israel and the United States.
Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion into Lebanon, where authorities say more than 4,300 people have been killed since March.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a framework deal in June that involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region. Violence in the border area has since decreased.