55 Americans Injured as Israeli Bus Overturns on Way to Egypt

A bus carrying American tourists on a trip through the Holy Land skidded on a rain-slick highway east of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and flipped over Tuesday, injuring all 56 people on board, officials said.

Three of the 55 American passengers are in serious condition and the driver of the bus, en route from Israel to Egypt, also was hurt. Many of the passengers crawled from the overturned bus through shattered windows.

“I was climbing over bodies. Blood was just running all over,” said Dora Bowling, a retired secretary from Fairmont, W. Va.

The Americans were participating in an extensive tour of the Holy Land sponsored by the West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Tour coordinator Wendall Eskew identified the three seriously injured passengers as Margaret Glass of Dunbar, W. Va.; Mary Lou Moore, of Charleston, W. Va.; and Donna Light of Wheeling, W. Va.

He said Glass and Moore are in their 70s and Light is in her 50s.

Five other passengers were in moderate condition at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, 15 suffered minor injuries and the others were treated and released, said Ilana Zeev, a spokeswoman for the facility, 40 miles southeast of Jerusalem.

“We were going around a curve and it was raining and slick and the bus seemed to hydroplane,” said Bonny Eskew, a music teacher also from Charleston, W. Va.

“We were heading for a ditch, then we swerved back to the right, lost control and turned over,” said Eskew, 59, who had a badly bruised right eye. “It happened so fast we didn’t have time to do anything.”

Many of the Americans suffered fractured limbs or cuts requiring stitches, said an emergency room surgeon who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Police commander Ezra Menashe told Israel army radio that the accident involved a bus from the East Jerusalem Tourism Co. and occurred on the road between Miflasim and Kfar Azza, two collective farms about three miles east of the Gaza Strip.

The tourists were headed from Jerusalem to Cairo via the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.

Debbie McGraw, a church secretary in Charleston, said the bus was carrying lay people and clergy from various parts of the state, as well as relatives from Virginia and possibly other states.