Two women killed in spate of holiday crashes

Two women were killed and a third seriously injured in three separate traffic accidents Sunday morning.

The carnage came as Israelis took to the roads by the hundreds of thousands for trips over the week-long Passover holiday.

Early Sunday morning, a 65-year-old woman was killed in a head-on collision between two cars close to the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit, southwest of Jerusalem.

Several other passengers were injured and taken to nearby hospitals.

Later in the morning, a 60-year-old woman was killed when her car collided with a truck on Highway 232 outside Kibbutz Be’eri, in the northwest Negev.

A passenger was taken to Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba with light injuries.

[mappress mapid=”5654″]

Minutes later, a pregnant woman, 20, was critically injured after her vehicle overturned between the settlements of Rotem and Maskiyot in the northern Jordan Valley section of the West Bank.

She was taken by helicopter to the Emek Medical Center in Afula with life-threatening injuries to her head and abdomen, Magen David Adom rescue services spokesperson Zaki Heller said in a press release.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the accident.

Others were injured in accidents reported on Highway 1 near the center of the country, and in Ashdod.