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Some 13 young Israelis were injured Saturday night in a bus accident in Laos, including five who are in moderate to serious condition. Five people were killed in the accident, after the bus driver, who apparently fell asleep, crashed into a tree. The driver died from his injuries.
The injured Israelis, aged 19 to 30, were on a night bus ("sleeper") that overturned in a ditch on the side of the road, on the way from the town of Vang Vieng to the town of Pakse. The dead are locals from Laos, and in addition to the Israelis, locals and about 10 Europeans also were injured.
The injured Israelis received initial medical treatment at a small hospital nearby, then were treated in Pakse, and later - following the intervention of the MAGNUS International Search & Rescue team and the Foreign Ministry - they were transferred by ambulance to Thailand, for further treatment at a hospital with better medical facilities.
Nadav, a young Israeli who was on the bus in Laos, said: "We were taking a night bus trip to Pakse. Everyone was sleeping. Suddenly you feel like the bus is going to overturn. I found myself thrown into a ditch under the bus. Miraculously, the bus didn't crush me. I started crawling out while everyone else was stuck in the bus. There were a lot of injured people, I made a list of all the Israelis to try to identify them. I found an American who knew how to perform a tourniquet while the Laotians were incapacitated and didn't know what to do. There was complete chaos, panic."
He said that "after a whole day we arrived at the hospital and they didn't know what to do. They transferred them to another hospital. No one treated the wounded except for bandages and painkillers. There were people in shocking condition. After 12-13 hours they got an ambulance from Thailand and evacuated us all to a hospital here. Thank God, all the Israelis are alive."
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"Last night, a serious car accident occurred in Laos involving Israeli travelers. The Department for Israelis Abroad and the Israeli Embassy in Vietnam worked around the clock, from the moment they received news of the accident, to ensure the transfer of the injured Israelis for medical treatment in Thailand," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Magnus team said that, in cooperation with the insurance companies Passportcard and Migdal, they acted upon receiving the call and connected its doctors to the insured. In addition, they coordinated the evacuation of the injured to hospitals. Migdal said that four of the injured were insured by the company.
Iris Lifshiz-Klieger participated in the preparation of this article