A blast caused by unexploded ordnance in northern Israel near the Lebanese border has injured approximately 20 people, police say.
Israel’s Magen David Adom said paramedics were treating “eight casualties in serious and moderate condition, as well as several additional casualties in mild condition” following the explosion on Monday, which police said occurred near the community of Neot Mordechai, between Kibbutz Manara and Kibbutz Yiftach.
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.
Police officers from the Kiryat Shmona station (Northern District) are on-site, securing and cordoning off the area, while bomb disposal experts investigate the circumstances and
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank said that some of the injured are described to be in critical condition.
“There is very little specific information as to what happened, what therthern Israel, the upper Galilee and particularly the border with Lebanon remains an area where there is a military operation, with the Israeli military deployed and where thousands of munitions were used over the past 3 years”, Odeh said
Odeh said the explosion had “mobilised” Israel’s political echelons, with the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu heading to the area, and the Israeli minister of National Security National Ben Gvir canceling a political engagement that was on his agenda.
Tens of thousands of Israelis living in the country’s north were forced to leave the region after Lebanon’s Hezbollah group started firing rockets following Israel’s genocidal 2023 war in Gaza.
In March, Israeli forces started occupying southern Lebanon following a renewal of hostilities after the US – Israel war on Iran.
The military said soldiers and helicopters had been dispatched to the scene in northern Israel, a region from which Israeli forces have been pounding Lebanon, whose Hezbollah militants have fired periodic rockets across the border.
Odeh says most residents have not returned because they “did not have the confidence” that the government will be able to protect them.
“They saw the extensive damage that rockets were exacting on their communities and many them, according reports, have not been encouraged to return because the situation remains volatile”, she said.
