Five people were killed and at least 41 injured in a rash of road accidents that occurred here Thursday.
Four of the fatalities were young women, who died when their Peugeot van collided with a bus in Jerusalem in the morning. All were from Jebel Mukaber village near East Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb, and were being driven to school.
Seven other girls in the Peugeot van were injured, three of them seriously. They were taken to Mokassed Hospital in East Jerusalem.
The fifth death was a man killed instantly when he was run over by a bus near Ashkelon in southern Israel.
A three vehicle pile-up on the Nazareth-Afula road injured 34 people, three of them badly enough to require hospitalization. Israel is believed to have the highest rate of highway fatalities per capita in the world. But thousands of hours of safety messages on state radio and television have failed to alter the driving habits of Israelis.
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