A giant stampede during a Jewish pilgrimage killed a dozen people at Mount Meron in northern Israel on Friday April 30, rescue workers and hospital sources told AFP.

"We count 38 dead at the scene but there are others in the hospital", told AFP a spokesperson for Magen David Adom - the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.

For its part, Ziv hospital, one of the establishments where victims were transported, told AFP that it had counted six dead, for a total of at least 44 deaths.

In the middle of the night, the flashing lights of dozens of ambulances twinkled near the scene of the accident as rescuers evacuated bodies and the wounded.

In the morning, the situation was tense as pilgrims cursed the police on the spot.

A compact crowd

Rescuers had initially mentioned the collapse of stands to explain these injured, before speaking of a giant "stampede".

Images relayed on social networks show a procession cutting through a hyper-compact crowd and approaching a metal structure where religious are standing near a fire.

The exact circumstances leading up to the mob scenes were unclear on Friday, but a rescuer Yehuda Gottleib, working for United Hatzalah, said he saw men being "crushed" and "losing consciousness", his organization said. .

"Huge disaster at Mount Meron," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted in Hebrew overnight, calling on the population to "pray to save the wounded".

"All of Israel is praying for the healing of the survivors," added opposition leader Yair Lapid, saying he was following the developments with "anxiety".

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.

Some 10,000 people authorized

The pilgrimage, which takes place on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer, is held in Méron, around the alleged tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochaï, a talmudist of the 2nd century of the Christian era who is credited with writing the Zohar , central work of Jewish mysticism.

Lag Baomer is a joyous feast marking moreover the memory of the end of a devastating epidemic among the pupils 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, emergency calls for rescuers multiplied, and six helicopters were deployed to evacuate the wounded to hospitals in Safed and Nahariya, two towns in the north of the country.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army confirmed having deployed helicopters to rescue the victims.

Monster traffic jams on the roads leading to the north of the country were reported by the police who had deployed 5,000 agents to ensure the safety of this event.

In 2019, a year before the pandemic which had forced the cancellation of the pilgrimage in 2020, the organizers estimated at 250,000 the number of pilgrims who went there.

Thanks to an intense vaccination campaign that has vaccinated 80% of the population over the age of 20, Israel reopened bars and restaurants in early March and authorized large outdoor gatherings.

With AFP

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