2 killed in ultralight plane crash

Two people were killed Saturday evening when an ultralight plane crashed in an open field near Kibbutz Shiller in Israel's Shfela (Lowlands) region.

At around 7 pm emergency aid workers received a report of an ultralight plane that crashed near Rehovot. Medical personnel that were alerted to the scene of the incident pronounced the death of two men, later identified as 43-year-old Elazar Moshe of Azur and Yitzhak Horen, 53, from Holon.

'They were already dead.' Crash site (Photo: Avi Moalem)

Rescue teams pulled the victims' bodies from the wreckage.

According to police, at around 7 pm the plane began to lose altitude for reasons that are not yet known and crashed a short while later.

Bodies evacuated from crash site (Photo: Avi Moalem)

The Transportation Ministry's senior aviation crash investigator, Yitzhak Raz, examined the wreckage. The plane took off from Rishon Lezion and flew for about 30 minutes until it crashed near Rehovot. The flight was apparently part of the victims' training.

One of the firefighters, Gamliel Fadida, said the plane was "broken in half" but was not on fire. "We managed to get (the men) out after 20 minutes, but they were already dead."

Roni Avraham, one of the paramedics who arrived at the scene, said, "The two pilots were trapped inside. We examined them and saw they were no longer alive. They sustained a major blow when the plane hit the ground."

Last May, one man was seriously injured and another was lightly injured when an ultralight plane crash in the backyard of a home in Nes Ziona, located near Rehovot. The people living in the house were not injured.

Last November, four people were killed in a civilian Robinson helicopter crash. The helicopter dove into the sea, some 300 meters from Sironit Beach in Netanya. The accident investigation found that a structural technical failure in one of the blades during the course of the flight was the cause of the crash. 

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