23 die as Israeli tour bus crashes

A bus filled with Russian tour guides crashed through a roadside barrier and tumbled down a steep ravine in Israel today killing at least 23 people.

The guides had just arrived in Israel to check out spots for future Russian tourists and were heading for the Red Sea resort of Eilat when the accident happened.

The driver of another tour bus said the vehicle sped by in a no-overtaking zone, crashed through a guard rail and rolled down the slope.

“Dozens of wounded and dead were strewn along the slope. Most of them were thrown from the bus as it rolled,” medic Gabi Baribo said.

A spokeswoman for Israel’s tourism ministry said the 60 passengers on the bus were Russians from St. Petersburg and had just landed.

Forty ambulances rushed to the scene and Israel’s air force dispatched six helicopters to evacuate the seriously wounded to hospitals across the country.

An Israeli military officer who was among the first to arrive said he and several others rescued six wounded people who were trapped in the bus.

“They were saved because they were trapped in their seats. The rest were scrambled and mangled, spread out along the slope,” said the officer.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “expressed shock at the horrific accident and the high number of people who were killed and wounded.” and sent his condolences.

The crash produced the highest death toll for a single accident in Israel’s history. In June 1985, a train ploughed into a bus that was stalled on the tracks, killing 18 children and three adults. In 1999, 16 people were killed in an accident similar to Tuesday’s, but in Israel’s north.

In contrast, more than 200 people have been killed in Palestinian suicide bombings on Israeli buses since 2000. The deadliest attack was in Jerusalem in August 2003, when 23 people were killed. The last bus bombing was in 2004.

Rescuers later said at least 26 people died in what is one of the worst traffic accidents in Israel’s history.

Television footage showed the blue bus overturned at the bottom of a desert ravine, debris strewn along the slope it rolled down from the road. Bodies in white bags were laid out in a row at the bottom of the ravine, which was swarming with rescue workers and soldiers.