Six foreign workers were injured early Tuesday morning, two of them seriously, when an old explosive detonated in an agricultural field in Metula, according to police and medics.
Metula is Israel’s northernmost community, located near the Israel-Lebanon border, which has been the site of heavy fighting over the past three years.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said that medics — in conjunction with an IDF medical team — evacuated the wounded via helicopter and ambulances to Ziv Medical Center in Safed.
Two people who were seriously injured and another who was moderately injured were admitted to the trauma room for initial medical treatment, according to Ziv.
Three additional wounded were being treated in the Emergency Department.
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According to the Ynet news site, the wounded farmhands hailed from Thailand.
Police said they were investigating the cause of the explosion and called on the public not to touch any shrapnel or interceptor debris that they may come across.
The Metula Municipality said the incident occurred in a nectarine orchard next to the city, and that “according to the details currently known, it was an old bomb that had gone undiscovered” until it was accidentally set off.
A view of Metula, near the Israeli border with Lebanon, after a rocket struck an agricultural field close to the town , killing five people and injuring one other, October 31, 2024. (Ayal Margolin/Flash90)
Prof. Aviram Nissan, director of the surgical department at Ziv Medical Center, said Tuesday morning that one of the seriously wounded was undergoing an operation while the other was undergoing imaging tests to determine his treatment.
Thai workers make up the largest group of foreign workers currently in Israel.
According to the Knesset Foreign Workers Committee, there were more than 195,000 legally employed foreign workers in Israel as of April 2025, alongside over 33,000 undocumented workers.
Some of them have paid a heavy price for working in border communities, often without adequate shelters or protection nearby. In the October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, 46 Thai citizens were killed and 31 were taken hostage to Gaza. In northern Israel, five Thai farm workers were killed by Hezbollah rocket fire.
At the start of the war, thousands of Thai workers returned home, and Thailand froze a bilateral agreement allowing more workers to enter Israel, but the agreement resumed in summer 2024.
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