Five Israelis killed in Morocco car crash en route to pilgrimage site
Safed mayor confirms some victims were city residents; Israelis were reportedly part of a group of Hasidic pilgrims visiting rabbis’ gravesites
Five Israelis were killed and three others were wounded in a car crash in Morocco on Friday morning.
Moroccan news site Hespress reported that the crash occurred on the road between Zagora and Tinghir, when the vehicle veered off course and flipped, killing all five passengers instantly.
The victims were members of the Breslov Hasidic community who were part of a group in Morocco to visit the graves of Jewish leaders and other pilgrimage sites, according to Ynet.
They were named by Hebrew media as Natan Shapira, 37, Shimon Tefilinski, 33, his brother Yosef Tefilinski, 20, Moshe Gallant, 18, and Israel Meir Shasha, 25.
According to the reports, Shapira and the elder Tefilinski brother each leave behind eight children.
The rest of the group, which was traveling in a number of cars, noticed the missing members several hours after arriving at their destination. They alerted local authorities, who located the overturned car several hours later, Ynet reported.
At least some of the dead were residents of Safed, in northern Israel. Safed Mayor Yossi Kakon confirmed that “a number of Safed residents were involved.”
The Foreign Ministry confirmed that it was aware of the incident and said Israeli representatives in Rabat were attending to the matter.
The Israel-based ZAKA organization, which attends to the bodies of accident and terror attack victims in accordance with Jewish tradition, said it was in touch with the local Jewish community to arrange for the bodies to be transported to Casablanca, and from there returned to Israel for burial.
