At least eight people were killed on Tuesday and over 25 people injured, including one in a critical condition, in a major traffic accident at the Lehavim junction in the south of Israel.
Initial reports suggested a truck carrying a tractor collided with a bus on Highway 31 just after 2 p.m.
The victims were all Bedouin women returning from an organized trip to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
The passengers on the bus were mostly from the area around Rahat, a large Bedouin city the Negev region.
Reports indicated that a truck carrying a large tractor hit the bus along the length of the left side, injuring passengers sitting on that side of the vehicle.
The tractor apparently fell off the back of the truck and crushed the bus, though some reports suggested a plow on the side of the tractor smashed into the bus.
Helicopters, including some from the IDF, were scrambled to the scene as Magen David Adom ambulances raced to the site to evacuate casualties to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
By 3 p.m. a spokesman for MDA said some of the casualties were still waiting to be taken to the hospital as lines of ambulances and dozens of paramedics and emergency rescue workers worked frantically to reach several people who were still trapped in the wreckage of the crash.
One of the injured women was listed in serious condition and two others in moderate condition.
Eli Peretz, from the Beersheba Fire Rescue forces, told Channel 2 news that the “accident is very tough. Every person that was on the side of the bus that was hit is injured badly.”
The Lehavim junction lies at the meeting point of Route 40 that runs from the Kiryat Gat to Beersheba, the largest city in the south of Israel, and Route 31 that comes from up from the Dead Sea area in the east.
By Stuart Winter and Jonathan Beck
