Israel was battered by its first storm of the season during the weekend, with fierce thunderstorms dumping from one to three inches of rain in various parts of the country.
Two Arab farmers here killed by lightning near Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip Sunday morning, and two others were treated for shock. They had been harvesting peppers in fields in the Gaza Strip.
Eilat was isolated from the rest of the country when nearly an inch of rain — the annual average — was dumped on the town in a few hours on Saturday.
Tourists trying to return north after spending the Succoth holiday in the Red Sea vacation center were marooned when the main roadway north was cut by flash floods rushing down what had been dry valleys.
The southern town was shaken Sunday morning by an earthquake, centered some miles south in the Red Sea off Nueba, which registered 4.7 on the Richter scale. There were no casualties or damage. Elsewhere in the south, hailstones as big as golf balls fell.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
