Two School Bus Passengers Killed in Incident, Nine Are Hospitalized

Two victims of a terrorist’s mine which exploded under a school bus loaded with children on a Negev road north of Eilat yesterday, will be buried here tomorrow. The victims were Dr. Pessach Meilin, a medical attendant travelling with the group and Hannan Kalev, a young volunteer counselor. Both were graduates of the Herzliah Gymnasium which was conducting its annual spring excursion for seventh and eighth-grade pupils when disaster struck. Nine of the pupils were in the hospital today, two of them in serious condition but said to be out of danger. Twenty-one other youngsters with minor injuries were home with their parents after receiving emergency first aid at Eilat where they spent the night.

There were in all, 350 on the excursion, part of Herzliah’s “know your land’ program which takes youngsters on overnight bus trips and hikes to places of interest in Israel. Thirty of the group, which filled three chartered busses, were teachers, medical attendants, counsellors and a few accompanying parents. The bus struck the road mine shortly before dusk yesterday near Beer Orah, the scene of four other mine incidents during the previous 24 hours, all of them obviously aimed at civilian traffic. As on the other occasions, security patrols found several pairs of footprints leading toward the Jordanian border.