Kisch halts northern school trips for two days after Hezbollah submunition blast

Israel's education minister, Yoav Kisch, has suspended school trips in the north of the country for two days after an explosion near the border with Lebanon injured students on a school hike, Ynet reported. According to The Times of Israel, the blast happened on October 12, 2026, after a pupil on the outing lifted a Hezbollah submunition that had never gone off.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kisch later visited the wounded at Rambam Health Care Center in Haifa, The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post reported. Separately, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, ordered an investigation into the incident, according to Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent for The Times of Israel.

What the government and army have done

Netanyahu's office said he instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Home Front Command to repeat its warnings to the public about ordnance people may come across, and to carry out fresh searches for further munitions, The Times of Israel reported. On the same evening, the Home Front Command circulated public information material on the danger of going near unexploded ordnance, describing it as a threat to life, News.co.il reported.

Zamir held a situation assessment with the head of Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, and told him to investigate the explosion and bring the findings to him as quickly as possible, Fabian reported. The IDF sent medical teams and helicopters to evacuate the wounded to hospitals, and army sappers, the military's explosive ordnance specialists, were still sweeping the area for other unexploded devices.

Ynet also carried an account from one of the injured students, who said that on seeing a friend had been hurt, he tried to help him.

The bodies involved

The Home Front Command is the branch of the IDF responsible for protecting Israel's civilian population, including issuing safety instructions to the public during and after hostilities. Northern Command is the IDF regional command responsible for Israel's borders with Lebanon and Syria, which is why its chief was tasked with the inquiry.

Rambam Health Care Center is a major hospital in Haifa, the largest city in northern Israel, and commonly receives casualties from the north of the country.

Hezbollah is the Lebanese armed group whose fire into northern Israel has left ordnance in the area. Fabian described the device as a cluster submunition. Cluster munitions scatter many small bomblets over an area, and some of them fail to detonate on impact, leaving them on the ground where they can later be handled by civilians who do not recognise them.

How sources describe the outcome

The reports differ in how they characterise the toll. Fabian referred to the explosion as deadly, which indicates at least one person was killed. The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post reports focus on the injured children visited in hospital and do not state whether anyone died. None of the reports gives a number of dead or wounded.

What the reports do not say

The reports do not identify the school, the students' ages, or the exact location of the hike beyond placing it in the north along the Lebanon border. They do not give casualty figures or the condition of those hospitalised. It is not stated whether the trip route had been approved or checked in advance, or what the scope of the new searches ordered by Netanyahu will be.

The reports also do not say whether the two-day suspension applies to all school trips in the north or only to certain areas, or what will happen when it ends. No findings from the army's investigation have been published, and no timeline was given beyond Zamir's instruction that results be presented as soon as possible.