Five dead in morning accidents nationwide

Monday morning saw a spate of deadly car and other accidents that led to five deaths and several wounded.

Four people were killed in three traffic accidents. One, a police volunteer, had stopped to help a stranded driver when he was run over by a passing vehicle at Rishon Lezion Junction, Ynet reported.

A 65-year-old woman was killed when her car overturned at approximately 9 a.m. on the Coastal Road near Haifa. The woman’s car flipped over when she lost control of it. According to bystanders, it flipped multiple times, crushing the vehicle’s frame before it came to a stop.

Firefighters were called in to extract her from her vehicle, but paramedics were forced to pronounce her dead moments later.

Earlier on Monday morning, two young men, both aged 25, were killed and three others wounded in a front-end collision between a private car and a truck on Road 57 east of Netanya. The wounded were a 25-year-old man with serious injuries and two unidentified individuals with moderate wounds. All were evacuated to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in nearby Hadera.

The section of highway where the accident took place has no barrier between the eastbound and westbound lanes. According to initial conclusions by traffic police investigators, the car driver entered the oncoming lane for an unknown reason and was straddling the median when he smashed into the truck going in the opposite direction.

Finally, a 23-year-old man was seriously wounded and a 48-year-old moderately wounded in a vehicle collision near the village of Fasuta in the western Galilee, near the Lebanese border. Both were evacuated to hospital in Nahariya. The younger man is reportedly unconscious.

Monday’s deadly accidents were not limited to Israel’s highways. A 68-year-old mechanic working for a subcontractor at the Ashdod Port was killed early Monday while doing routine maintenance on a truck at the port.

The truck apparently fell on the man and crushed him to death, though the precise circumstances and cause of death are not fully understood, according to officials.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene, and police have launched a joint investigation with workplace safety officials in the Economy Ministry.

Casino busted

Early Monday, police in Tiberias raided two suspected casinos in the Galilean city. Casinos are illegal in Israel.

According to police officials, tens of thousands of shekels in cash were found at the sites, along with computers and digital equipment used for gambling. Two suspects were arrested on suspicion of running the casinos.

Late Sunday, police stopped a vehicle for a routine check on Road 89 in the north of the country, near Maalot Tarshiha. Two men in the vehicle, aged 23 and 25, attacked the officers, who responded with force and arrested the suspects, police say.

Police were not hurt in the incident. There was no word on the condition or motive of the suspected attackers, who were remanded in the Acre Magistrate’s Court Monday morning.

And in Peki’in in northern Israel, a grenade was thrown at the front yard of a home just before 2 a.m. Monday, the homeowner told police, who opened an investigation into the attack.