Boy of 13 dies after being struck by car on Acre-Haifa road in Kiryat Bialik

A teenager was killed late in the evening after being hit by a vehicle on the Acre-Haifa road in Kiryat Bialik, in northern Israel. Magen David Adom, Israel's national emergency medical service, said its Carmel region dispatch centre received the call at 23:10 reporting a youth struck by a car, and that medics and paramedics began resuscitation on a boy of around 13 who was in critical condition with multi-system trauma.

In a follow-up statement minutes later, the service said its teams were treating and evacuating the casualty to Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa while resuscitation continued. Ynet reported that the 13-year-old was pronounced dead at the hospital, and that an initial police examination indicated he had been playing with friends and stepped into the roadway for reasons that are not yet established, before being hit by a passing vehicle. The driver sustained light injuries, according to the same report.

A discrepancy over the victim's age

The two statements issued by Magen David Adom do not match on the victim's age. The first described a youth of about 13; the second, issued as an update on the same road accident in Kiryat Bialik, referred to a 19-year-old in critical condition with multi-system trauma. Ynet's report and a subsequent item on N12 both describe the person killed as 13. The material available does not explain the difference, and it is common for ages given in the first minutes of an emergency call-out to be corrected later. We are reporting both figures as they were published rather than choosing between them.

Where this happened

Kiryat Bialik is one of the Krayot, a cluster of towns north of Haifa on Israel's Mediterranean coast that function largely as suburbs of the city. The road on which the collision occurred, the Acre-Haifa route, is a busy coastal artery linking Haifa with Acre further north, and it runs through built-up areas where local traffic and through traffic mix. Ynet placed the collision at Tzabar Junction.

Rambam Health Care Campus, where the teenager was taken, is the largest hospital in northern Israel and serves as the region's main trauma centre, receiving the most serious cases from across the Haifa area and the Galilee.

What Magen David Adom is

Magen David Adom, whose name means Red Shield of David, is Israel's national ambulance, blood services and disaster response organisation, and it is recognised internationally as the country's equivalent of a national Red Cross society. Its emergency number is 101. The organisation routinely publishes short operational statements through its spokesperson's unit on the state of casualties at a scene, often before police have issued anything, which is why its wording is usually the first public account of a road death in Israel and why it is sometimes revised.

Road deaths among children

N12 correspondent Din Fischer reported figures from Or Yarok, an Israeli road safety association whose name means Green Light, placing the death in the context of child road fatalities. According to those figures, 36 children up to the age of 14 have been killed in road accidents since the start of 2026, compared with 35 children killed over the whole of 2025.

Ynet also noted the timing: the collision fell during the school break between Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, and Sukkot, the week-long festival of booths that follows it. In Israel that gap is widely known as the bridge holiday, a stretch of days when schools are closed and children are out of the house.

What the reports do not say

The material does not identify the teenager by name, and does not say whether the family has authorised publication. It does not state the make of vehicle involved, its speed, whether there was a pedestrian crossing at the point of impact, or whether the driver was detained or questioned. No police statement appears in the material, and the account of the boy playing with friends before entering the road is attributed to an initial examination rather than to a concluded investigation. There is also no indication of when a formal inquiry is expected to report.