Victim Died During Call to Her Mother

One of the two Israeli victims killed in Wednesday’s bombing was a young woman who was talking to her mother on a mobile phone from a street in this northern Israeli town when the blast hit, her aunt said.

“She was talking to her mother on the mobile phone when [the mother] heard the sound of an explosion and then the line was cut off,” said the aunt, who declined to give her name or any personal details pending notification of family members.

She said the mother tried to call the daughter back but eventually gave up and raced to Hadera’s Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, where hospital staff gave her the news--that her daughter had been killed.

A man was also killed and more than 55 people were wounded, many on a bus that bore the brunt of the blast.

Sobbing as she stood waiting for her husband at the hospital entrance, the aunt said her niece had recently finished her compulsory military service. That would put the dead woman’s age at about 20.