Car and tractor collide at entrance to Golan moshav, about ten hurt

About ten people were injured in a collision between a car and a tractor at the entrance to Natur, a community in the Golan Heights in northern Israel, emergency services said. Magen David Adom, Israel's national emergency medical service, said its 101 emergency call centre for the Jordan region received the report at 00:47, and that the crash took place on Route 8691 at the entrance to the community.

MDA said its medics and paramedics treated the casualties at the scene and evacuated them to hospital. One casualty, described as an 18-year-old with a head injury in moderate condition, was flown by the MDA-Hatzalah Air helicopter to Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. Others were taken to the Northern Medical Centre, known as Poriya, near Tiberias, where MDA listed an 18-year-old in moderate condition with a facial injury alongside casualties in light condition.

The reports do not agree on how many were hurt

The three accounts published overnight give different totals. Israeli broadcaster N12 reported that ten people were injured, one of them moderately and nine lightly, and said all of them were treated by MDA teams and taken to the Northern Medical Centre. The Ynet news site's alerts channel put the number at 11 injured, two of them in moderate condition.

MDA's own statement is internally hard to reconcile: it describes one casualty airlifted to Rambam and then lists the group sent to Poriya as nine people, while naming within that group an 18-year-old in moderate condition and a further count of casualties in light condition. Discrepancies of this kind are common in the first statements after a road crash in Israel, where figures are compiled at the scene while treatment is still under way and are often revised once hospitals register arrivals. None of the three organisations issued an updated tally in the material available.

Where Natur is

Natur is a moshav, a cooperative farming village, in the Golan Heights, the plateau in Israel's north-east that overlooks the Sea of Galilee and borders Syria. The area is thinly populated and agricultural, with cattle grazing, orchards and vineyards, and tractors and other farm vehicles are a routine presence on its roads. Route 8691 is a local road serving the area rather than a main highway.

The casualties were divided between two hospitals that serve the north of the country. Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa is the largest hospital in northern Israel and functions as the region's trauma referral centre, which is why a patient with a head injury would be flown there rather than driven to a closer facility. The Northern Medical Centre, widely referred to by its older name Poriya, sits above Tiberias on the western side of the Sea of Galilee and is the nearest general hospital to much of the southern Golan.

What MDA does

Magen David Adom, whose name translates as Red Shield of David, is Israel's designated national emergency medical and blood services organisation and the country's member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It operates the 101 emergency number, the medical equivalent of calling an ambulance elsewhere, and dispatches from regional call centres, in this case the one covering the Jordan valley region. MDA-Hatzalah Air is its air evacuation arm, used for long distances or where a patient needs a trauma centre quickly.

What the reports do not say

None of the three accounts describes how the collision happened, who was driving either vehicle, or whether the tractor was working at the time. There is no information on the ages of the casualties other than the two 18-year-olds named by MDA, and no indication of whether they were travelling together. The reports do not say whether police opened an investigation, whether the road was closed, or what condition the casualties were in after arriving at hospital. Ynet's higher figure of 11 injured is not explained or reconciled with the counts given by MDA and N12, and no organisation has said which total is the final one.