Teenager killed, 24 hurt as old Hezbollah munition explodes on Israeli school hike

A 14-year-old boy was killed and 24 people were wounded on Monday when an unexploded munition, thought to be a Hezbollah cluster bomblet left over from the war, blew up during a school hike near Israel’s border with Lebanon.

The students and teachers, from ORT Ma’alot school, were walking a scenic route through the Naftali Mountains forest on the Ramim Ridge in the Upper Galilee when the blast went off at about 3:30 pm. A preliminary police and army inquiry found that a student had picked up the device and put it in his backpack, where it exploded a few minutes later.

“Apparently, the suspicion is that an unexploded munition of some kind exploded in the hands of one of the students,” said Meir Eliyahu, the police commander for the northern district.

Children helping the wounded

Magen David Adom, Israel’s ambulance service, said two boys of about 14 were seriously hurt with shrapnel wounds across their bodies. Ten people, two adults and eight teenage boys, were moderately injured and 12 more lightly hurt. The wounded were taken by ambulance and helicopter to hospitals in Safed, Nahariya and Haifa.

MDA medic David Radko described the injured as “scattered along the road”, and said some students had helped put tourniquets on their classmates. Security forces evacuated other groups hiking nearby.

The Israeli military said the device “was likely a cluster bomb belonging to the Hezbollah terror organization that had been left in the area and exploded”, and that sappers were combing the area. During the war, Hezbollah fired Grad rockets carrying dozens of small submunitions into northern Israel. Many failed to explode on impact and remain scattered across fields and forests.

Questions over the route

The trip had been approved, and Education Minister Yoav Kisch said a preliminary review showed the route had been vetted and that briefings had warned about unexploded ordnance. A forestry sign in the area, however, warned hikers away because of “war damage”. Kisch ordered a halt to school trips along the northern border and a 48-hour suspension of activity in the zone while it is checked.

Police Commissioner Danny Levy called it a “very serious incident, in which children who went on a field trip were hurt, to our sorrow”, and said he would limit hikes in the area for several days. Army chief Eyal Zamir ordered Northern Command to investigate.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled the rest of his schedule and visited the wounded at Rambam hospital in Haifa with Kisch. He told the Home Front Command to repeat public warnings against touching unexploded ordnance.

A US-brokered ceasefire reached in late June was meant to end months of fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, but progress on an Israeli pullback has largely stalled.