An evacuee from Israel’s north was wounded over the weekend when a porcupine violently attacked him on the grounds of the hotel where he was staying.
Shalom Yonassi, a 50-year-old resident of Kiryat Shmona who has been evacuated to the Herbert Samuel Bayit Bagalil Hotel Spa in Hatzor HaGlilit due to the Hezbollah threat, was rushed to Safed’s Ziv Medical Center, where surgeons removed 40 spines from his legs and feet.
“We are staying at a hotel in the middle of the Biriya Forest. There are many animals there, including porcupines,” Yonassi told Israel’s Channel 12 News on Monday.
“I wanted to go down towards our room and came across a porcupine. The porcupine was standing by a fig tree and was eating. I stopped because I didn’t want to disturb him, but the porcupine saw me and started running in my direction,” he said about Saturday’s incident.
“I turned around and wanted to run away, but I ran into a vehicle behind me. I fell to the ground and the porcupine attacked me,” he explained.
Yonassi was released from the hospital and returned to the hotel on Monday morning but will likely need additional surgery on his leg, where the porcupine attack is believed to have caused nerve damage.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel’s north nearly every day since joining the war in support of Hamas on Oct. 8, firing thousands of suicide drones, rockets and anti-tank missiles at Israeli border towns, killing more than 40 people and causing widespread damage. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians remain internally displaced due to the ongoing violence.
Yonassi told Channel 12 on Monday, “Perhaps this is the way to stop the war: Bring 50 porcupines into Lebanon, and then the war will be over.”
On Sunday, a crocodile attacked a staff member at Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo. The man remained in serious condition on Monday following major surgery at Hadassah Medical Center Ein Kerem in the capital.
