Ten people were lightly injured on Friday when an Israel Railways
passenger train struck a bus near the entrance to Nitzan, a communal
settlement in the South.
MDA paramedics treated the injured on the scene, evacuating seven of them to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.
An initial police investigation found that the bus was traveling from
Nitzan toward the entrance to Route 4 when it drove on to the train
tracks and was forced to stop because their was a car preceding it,
stopped at a red traffic light, not allowing it to move forward off the
tracks. The driver was not able to back up off the tracks in time to avoid the train.
The train conductor was able to slow down considerably, but still struck
the bus, causing it to flip over on its side. It was unclear whether
the ten injured people were passengers of the bus or the train.
The bus driver was not injured, but was suffering from shock.
Police were continuing to investigate the accident and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz announced Friday that he was establishing a committee to launch a probe into the causes of the accident.