A school hiking trip in northern Israel turned deadly on Monday, October 12, 2026, when what authorities believe was unexploded ordnance left over from Hezbollah rocket fire detonated among a group of students. A 14-year-old boy was killed and 24 others were injured, some seriously, in an incident that has shocked Israel and renewed urgent questions about the hidden dangers that past fighting leaves behind.

The explosion struck near the Mitzpe Pe'er lookout on the Ramim Ridge in the Upper Galilee, close to the Lebanese border. The students and teachers were from the ORT Ma'alot Yeshiva High School in the town of Ma'alot-Tarshiha and were on the first day of their school's annual trek along the Israel National Trail, according to Israeli media reports. Israel's national emergency service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said its Jordan Valley regional call center received the first report at 2:53 p.m., and a large emergency response — ambulances, intensive care units, soldiers and military helicopters — converged on the forest trail.

The victim: a ninth-grader with his whole future ahead

The teenager killed was identified on Tuesday morning as Elazar Yair Vilansky, a ninth-grade student at the ORT Ma'alot Yeshiva and the youngest of five children. He is survived by his parents, three sisters and a brother. In a statement, his family described him as "a child who loved life, intelligent and wise, full of joy, a good and beloved friend, whose entire future was still ahead of him."

Of the 24 injured, two 14-year-olds were reported in serious condition with shrapnel wounds, around ten sustained moderate injuries, and the rest suffered light injuries, according to emergency services. Twenty-two of the wounded were students and two were accompanying adults. The seriously injured were airlifted by military helicopters to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

What investigators believe happened

According to preliminary findings, one of the students apparently discovered a metallic object on the hiking trail and picked it up. Accounts of the exact sequence of events differ and the investigation is ongoing, but several students handled and even photographed the device. One injured 14-year-old, Eitan Masauri — struck by shrapnel in the neck — told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited him in hospital, that a student had "unscrewed" part of the object before it exploded. Another account, relayed by the father of an uninjured student, said the boys were "excited about it and took pictures" before one of them put it in his bag, and it detonated when the bag was set down near where the group was resting. Investigators are still establishing precisely what triggered the detonation.

The Israeli military's initial assessment is that the device was most likely a submunition from a Hezbollah cluster rocket — a smaller explosive designed to scatter across a wide area when the main rocket disperses them. Some of these fail to explode on impact and remain dangerous for years. Police Commissioner Danny Levy said investigators were "almost certain" that cluster munitions were involved, though the weapon's precise origin and how it came to be in an area accessible to hikers remain under investigation.

The stretch of trail where the blast occurred had previously been used as a staging ground for Israeli forces and had also been hit by Hezbollah fire, according to Israeli media — placing unexploded munitions in exactly the kind of place where hikers, farmers and children walk every day.

Netanyahu visits the wounded; school trips suspended

On Monday evening, Prime Minister Netanyahu, together with Education Minister Yoav Kisch, visited the wounded students and their families at Rambam Hospital in Haifa. After hearing firsthand accounts of the tragedy, Netanyahu instructed the commander of the IDF Home Front Command to strengthen public warnings about unexploded ordnance and reinforce instructions prohibiting civilians from touching suspicious objects. Deputy Police Commissioner Meir Eliyahu, speaking at the scene, said the initial suspicion was that "an unexploded munition of some kind exploded in the hands of one of the students."

Education Minister Kisch ordered a 48-hour suspension of all school trips in the northern border area and the Golan Heights, with already-scheduled outings redirected to alternative routes. All student camps in the north were also cancelled for two days. Israel's police chief said authorities would review whether to halt school trips in the area altogether.

The incident has also prompted hard questions about how a school group came to be hiking on a route where remnants of Hezbollah rocket fire could still be present, even though the Education Ministry said the trip had received the necessary approval.

Why unexploded ordnance stays deadly for decades

Unexploded ordnance — often shortened to UXO — refers to explosive weapons that were used but failed to detonate, including artillery shells, mortars, grenades, bombs and cluster submunitions. Cluster munitions are a particular hazard: a single rocket or bomb can release dozens or hundreds of smaller "bomblets" over a wide area, and dud rates of even a few percent can leave hundreds of live explosives scattered across farmland, forests and villages.

Unlike landmines, which are deliberately planted, cluster submunitions end up in unpredictable places — wherever they happened to land. They are often small, brightly colored or shaped like harmless objects, which makes them tragically attractive to children. Globally, civilians — and disproportionately children — make up the vast majority of casualties from cluster munition remnants, long after the fighting has stopped.

Northern Israel and southern Lebanon have accumulated significant UXO contamination from years of cross-border fighting, including the 2006 war and the more recent rounds of Hezbollah rocket fire toward Israeli communities. Clearing it is slow, painstaking work: each suspected device must be located, identified and destroyed in controlled conditions. The tragedy on the Ramim Ridge is a stark reminder that the danger does not end when the rockets stop flying.

Regional context: a volatile border

The blast occurred against the backdrop of continuing instability along Israel's northern border. Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, has fired rockets and drones at northern Israel for years, and Israeli forces have repeatedly struck back across the border. The area where the students were hiking sits within the belt of territory that has absorbed some of the heaviest fire.

Elsewhere in the region, escalation has continued this week. Drone and missile attacks have rattled shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman — see our coverage of the Oman and Hormuz tanker attacks — while the Houthis in Yemen have warned airlines away from Saudi airports after deadly strikes on Riyadh. Against this background, the UAE's top diplomat has called for reviving joint Gulf security and defence action, underscoring how conflict-related threats are rippling across the region.

What parents and educators can take from this

Authorities worldwide give the same core advice for anyone who encounters a suspicious object in an area with a history of conflict:

  • Do not touch it. Never pick up, kick, move or try to open a strange metallic object — even if it looks old, rusty or inert.
  • Mark the location and move away along the path you came on, to avoid stepping on other devices.
  • Report it immediately to police or emergency services, describing exactly where you found it.
  • Teach children the rule. Children are the most frequent victims of UXO worldwide precisely because curiosity overrides caution.

Israel's school system, which runs organized annual hikes and field trips for students of all ages, now faces a national conversation about how to balance that cherished tradition with the realities of a landscape that still hides weapons of past wars. It was not the only school tragedy this month: in Pakistan, a school roof collapse in Peshawar killed at least 28 people, most of them children.

Sources: Reuters; CNN; Matzav; JFeed. Figures for casualties reflect the latest reports available at the time of publication and remain subject to official confirmation as the investigation continues.