Israeli mother of 4 killed in car crash in French Alps

An Israeli woman was killed Wednesday in a traffic accident in the French Alps, with seven other Israelis lightly injured in the head-on collision.

The victim was identified by Hebrew-language reports as 40-year-old Yael Basis, a single mother of four from the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad in central Israel.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the wounded were taken to local hospitals, and that the consul in Paris, Uri David, is working with the ministry and with French authorities to transfer the victim’s body to Israel for burial.

Two of the wounded are her sons, who have reportedly returned to Israel for medical treatment.

Basis reportedly worked at a hotel in the resort of Val Thorens in the French Alps in southeastern France, near the Switzerland border, and was on her way there when the crash occurred.

Yehuda Shapira, an eyewitness to the crash and a volunteer for the Israeli search and rescue organization ZAKA, said the road was “very curvy and dangerous.”

“I saw the head-on collision while driving and I immediately stopped to provide first aid,” he told reporters. He added that medical teams arrived quickly but were forced to pronounce the woman’s death at the scene.

“The vehicle was completely crushed,” Shapira said.

Back in her home community, Basis’s shocked friends in Elad spoke of a special woman who always wanted to help.

“It is a great heartbreak, a mother of four who educated her kids and took care of them all alone,” a friend was quoted as saying by ultra-Orthodox website Kikar Hashabbat. “It is unbelievable how it all happened in one moment.”