Haifa: Yom Kippur stone-throwers hurt 2

MDA teams treat 2,200 du

Two motorists were injured by rocks thrown at their vehicles on Haifa's Rehov Hahagana on Sunday night, during the Yom Kippur fast. In the first attack, a 17-year-old sustained light head injuries when a rock was thrown at his car. In the second incident, a 40-year-old was wounded in his hand. Police sealed off the street to traffic until the end of Yom Kippur, and opened a search for the youths behind the attacks. A third rock-throwing attack was reported at Tzabar junction, at the entrance to Kiryat Motzkin, in which an Israel Electric Corporation vehicle was damaged. In Haifa, Ashdod, Kiryat Shmona, Netanya and Kiryat Gat, there were incidents in which youngsters interfered with the passage of ambulances. Magen David Adom staffers and volunteers had their hands full as they treated some 2,200 adults and children over the fast day. Thirty-eight people were injured in 18 road accidents before the fast. During Yom Kippur, 23 people who felt unwell or were injured were treated at MDA stations. Fifty people fainted during the fast, and 16 required resuscitation. MDA staffers delivered the babies of five women in their homes when they did not have time to reach the hospital. A total of 162 children needed first aid after being hurt on roller blades, bicycles, skateboards and skates during the fast, and a 26-year-old man who biked on Sderot Har Zion in Tel Aviv without wearing a helmet fell down and was injured badly. He was taken unconscious by mobile intensive care unit to Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in serious condition with a head injury. A 60-year-old deaf man in Tel Aviv who did not hear his neighbors' warning to leave the building when a fire broke out there was evacuated, resuscitated and rushed to Sourasky after he suffered from smoke inhalation. Also on Sunday, several shots were fired at the offices of regional council head Brig.-Gen. Zvika (res.) Fugal in the Beduin village of Tuba-Zanghariya, east of Safed. A gunman travelling in a car with additional men opened fire with an automatic weapon, damaging the building. Fugal's car was also torched. He was appointed to his position in 2008 by the Interior Ministry, to help combat crime and municipal tax evasion in the community. Although he has served in a number of senior posts in the IDF's Southern Command, police believe it is unlikely that he was the target of a nationalistically-motivated attack. It was probably economically motivated, perhaps linked to certain clans in the village that are unhappy with a number of Fugal's decisions. A number of unsolved murders suspected by police to be linked to inter-clan violence have occurred in the village in recent years. Meanwhile, in Nazareth Illit, police have opened an investigation after several car mirrors were smashed. In Kiryat Ata, a gas station was held up by four masked men - one of them armed - who made away with equipment snatched from a storage room. In Acre, which was the scene of violence between Jews and Arabs during Yom Kippur 2008, remained peaceful this year after many police officers were deployed there. Extra officers were also sent to Nazareth Illit and Karmiel following a situation analysis on Sunday by Northern District Police chief Cmdr. Shimon Koren. In the South, a 38-year-old man was wounded in the head in an ax attack in the Beduin village of Segev Shalom. He was found by paramedics near a mosque and taken to the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba early on Monday.