Eight Palestinians were killed on Thursday in a collision between a heavy truck and the minibus they were in in the occupied West Bank, state Palestinian media reported.
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"President Mahmoud Abbas declared a day of mourning across Palestine on Friday in honor of the victims,"
the official Wafa news agency reported. The accident occurred at a roundabout on Route 90 which runs along the Jordan Valley in an area of the West Bank under Israeli civil and military control near the village of Fayasel, the same source said.
A Magen rescuer David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, spoke of a
"shocking"
scene when describing the accident.
“We saw a truck and a private vehicle crashed on the side of the road
,” he said. Israeli rescuers previously reported seven dead and three seriously injured who were evacuated by helicopter to Israeli hospitals.
The identity of the victims was not immediately known.
Palestinian police told AFP that they were workers from the town of Aqraba, near the city of Nablus.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz offered his condolences to the Palestinian families of the crash victims in a message of support in Arabic and Hebrew.
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