Scene of accident
IDF soldier killed, officer seriously wounded in head-on road collision
Medics pronounce soldier dead after extricating him from IDF vehicle tipped upside down on roadside after truck slams into it; truck driver lightly wounded, while officer sustains serious injuries.
An IDF soldier was killed and an officer seriously wounded in a car accident in the upper Galilee Wednesday, it was cleared for publication hours after a head-on collision took place between a truck and a military van. The truck driver was lightly wounded in the crash.
The soldier was later identified as Ariel Harush, 21, an Artillery Corps soldier from Holon.
Ariel Harush (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
The Military Police and Israel Police immediately opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the accident.
The families of the deceased and wounded soldiers have been informed.
(Photo: Avihu Shapira)
After the crash, which took place on Route 889 near Kibbutz Yiftah, firefighters were called to the scene to extricate the wounded victims from the vehicles and Magen David Adom (MDA) medics began providing emergency treatment.
The 20-year-old officer who was lying on the side of the road, suffered numerous internal injuries and was evacuated by helicopter to the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa while the 40-year-old truck driver was rushed to Ziv Medical Center in Safed.
(Photo: Avihu Shapira)
“This was an extremely serious crash … We saw an upside down vehicle on the side road and a soldier was pulled from it by the firefighters,” one MDA medic recalled. “He was unconscious and showed no signs of life and within a short space of time he was declared dead.”
Scene of crash
This year, 333 people have been killed in road accidents, compared to 331 by the same time last year. Since the beginning of November, 16 lives have been claimed by Israel’s roads.
