Toddler drowns in pond at Zikim beach, in 2nd water fatality of the day

A three-year-old boy drowned at a pond next to a beach in southern Israel on Saturday.

The boy, from the Bedouin town of Tel Sheva, near Beersheba, drowned at Zikim beach, south of Ashkelon, medics said.

He was brought to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center in critical condition, but medics were unable to resuscitate him, and his death was declared after several hours of treatment.

“They told us he was pulled out of the water unconscious. We carried out advanced resuscitation efforts and evacuated him to the hospital while doing medical treatments to try to save him, but his condition was severe and unstable,” a medic from Magen David Adom said in a statement.

Medics responding to the call found the boy unconscious, lying next to a “pond” adjacent to Zikim’s beach area, the statement said.

There is a reservoir near the public beach, and parts of the sand dunes around the beach sometimes fill with water, forming pools that remain separated from the ocean.

The ponds do not have lifeguards and have been fenced off, but some visitors go into the bodies of water anyway.

Several years ago, a 45-year-old man drowned in one of the ponds while rescuing a woman and three children, the Ynet news site reported.

Around 30 people have died of drowning so far this year, with the beach season far from over, compared to 26 drowning deaths in all of 2022.

Last month, the Knesset’s Information and Research Center said that most of those who died in the previous 13 months drowned in places where it is prohibited to go in the water, or when there were no lifeguards on duty, in a trend also seen in previous years, the report noted.

There are 156 authorized beaches along Israel’s 306 kilometers (190 miles) of coastline, including along the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea.

Earlier Saturday, a 62-year-old man died at an undeclared beach south of Haifa that had no lifeguard.