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A crowd of Jewish worshippers broke through police barriers Thursday on an annual pilgrimage to Mount Meron in Israel, a year after forty-five other people were crushed to death in a stampede.
Israeli police said “dozens of extremists” broke into a segment of the devotees as they “savagely threw down fences and endangered human lives. “
Police withdrew from the scene when an organization of worshippers broke down the barriers and stormed, an AFP photographer said, adding that police returned later.
More than 10,000 worshippers had gathered in the tightest security measures for the start of the pilgrimage on Wednesday.
The pilgrimage to Mount Meron takes place at the Lag BaOmer supper, when most ultra-Orthodox Jews flock to the site of the tomb of the respected second-century rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.
On April 30 last year, a stampede broke out in the male segment of the gender division when the length of the crowd turned a narrow passage into a fatal strangulation.
At least 16 young men were among those trampled to death, in what then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “one of the worst” mistakes in Israel’s history.
An AFP photographer saw several worshippers arrested and handcuffed by police on Thursday. In addition, some of the site’s security cameras and electrical appliances were sabotaged, the photographer said.
Police then stopped the movement of more worshippers to the site, where the pilgrimage continues until Thursday night.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Wednesday that his government had made a “considerable investment” in new security measures so that it would not repeat what was last year.
Among the adjustments is a cap of 16,000 pilgrims allowed at any given time.
On Tuesday, police said they seized knives and hammers belonging to an “ultra-Orthodox extremist faction” that allegedly sabotaged communications infrastructure at the site.
Some ultra-Orthodox sects are anti-Zionist and oppose the Jewish state’s way of life. They are hostile to Israel’s state institutions, adding their police force.
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