Credit: Social media
A shark was filmed swimming among terrified small children on an Israeli beach before attacking a diver who is missing and feared dead.
In what could be the first fatal shark attack in the country’s history, graphic footage showed the sea turning blood red around a man as he shouted, “I’m bitten, I’m bitten”.
The attack happened on Monday, just after the fish was filmed swimming in shallow water between a group of young children who appeared frozen in terror.
The beach at Hadera, north of Tel Aviv, remained shut on Tuesday as the search for the missing man, who has not been identified, continued into its second day.
It came as police said they had sent “findings” for forensic analysis as part of their search.
The incident is only the third recorded shark attack in Israel. One person was killed in the 1940s, but before the country was founded in 1948.
The stretch of coastline has, however, been well known for close encounters between sharks and beachgoers, who sometimes seek them out.
A shiver of endangered dusky and sandbar sharks has been swimming close to the area for years, believed to be attracted by the warm water released by a nearby power plant.
Conservation groups have agitated for years for authorities to keep them away from humans, to no avail.
One video shared by Israeli media showed a shark swimming right up to bathers in thigh-deep water.
“What a huge shark!” the man filming exclaims, as the shark approaches him. “Whoa! He’s coming toward us!”
“Don’t move!” he implores a boy standing nearby, who replies: “I’m leaving.”
The man then asks: “What, are you afraid of the sharks?”
Footage of the attack, which took place further out to sea, showed a tail of what appeared to be a shark thrashing out of the water, before it turned red.
Israeli media reported that the victim had gone to swim with the sharks.
An eyewitness told Channel 12: “I saw the diver in the depths of the water, he shouted: ‘I’m bitten, I’m bitten’, and waved his hands in the air. After a few minutes, sharks bit him, and suddenly he disappeared.”
Separate footage from the beach shows people tugging at the sharks’ fins, while others throw fish for them to eat.
Dusky sharks can stretch 4 meters (13 feet) long and weigh about 350 kilograms (750 pounds). Sandbar sharks are smaller, growing to about 2.5 meters (8 feet) and 100 kilograms (220 pounds).
Yigael Ben-Ari, head of the Israel’s Parks and Nature Authority’s marine ranger force, said it was unknown how the man believed to have been attacked behaved around the sharks, but he said the public had a responsibility to recognise that they should not enter the waters and definitely should not touch or play with the sharks.
“Like every wild animal, the sharks’ behaviour may be unpredictable,” the authority said in a statement.
“It would have been appropriate to take steps to preserve and regulate public safety, but over the years, chaos has developed in the area,” the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, an environmental group, said in a statement.
‘Not accustomed to being around crowds’
Mr Ben-Ari said the beach was closed to swimmers, but the instruction was ignored.
It said fishermen, boats, divers, surfers and snorkellers intersected dangerously with a wild animal that “is not accustomed to being around crowds of people”.
Israel can ill afford any suggestion that its beaches are unsafe, as it is already coping with a huge drop in tourist numbers due to the security situation since October 2023.
Visitor numbers dropped by more than 68 per cent last year compared to the year before, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
On Tuesday, a police spokesman said: We are on the second day of the search, both in the sea and on the shore, we are sparing no means,” says police spokesman Aryeh Doron.
He added: “At this point, I am able to say that there were several findings that were sent for [forensic] examination, and we will await the professional results.
“We want to end this day by bringing relief to the family. Until there is a final answer for them, we will continue our efforts.”
shark attack, sandbar sharks, Israel, Israeli media, water turned red
#Shark #filmed #swimming #among #children #deadly #attack