An 11-year-old girl was attacked by a wild boar Tuesday in the northern city of Haifa.
"My daughter was at a Purim party at school yesterday where she received a shalach manos [a holiday parcel filled with sweets], which she kept in her bag," said Efrat Morag, whose daughter Hila was assailed by the boar.
"This morning she met with three of her friends and they went to play in the local adventure park. Suddenly, they saw a huge boar approaching, it probably smelled the food in her bag.”
“It started running at her, her friends were really scared and ran away. Hila threw her bag, probably out of fear.”
According to Morag, the boar went straight for the bag, tore it to pieces, and ate its contents whole, including the sweets, clothes, money, and even a toothbrush that were inside.
“City inspectors arrived at the scene but they could do nothing… It’s a nightmare. There are times when you can’t so much as walk down the street,” she said.
Wild boar shortly after attacking 11-year-old Hila Morag in Haifa
(Video: Alma Tal)
“You can't even send your children to walk down the street without being afraid… The wild boar are no longer scared, they’ll eat everything. They are no longer a curiosity, they are a tangible threat."
While boar used to be a rare sight in Haifa, it seems that these wild animals have become a common and recurring problem as encounters with local residents occasionally result in serious injuries.
According to locals, herds of wild boar can often be seen roaming the city’s streets, wreaking havoc and destroying property, and in some rare cases like Thursday's incident, even turning hostile and attacking people.
Unlike her predecessors who chose to cull the boar population through hunting, Haifa’s current mayor Einat Kalisch-Rotem decided to approach the problem with non-lethal means.
She has opted to deny the pigs any sources of food and water in the city, such as reinforcing trash cans to prevent the animals from reaching the discarded food inside.
These measures have not found favor with some local officials who described them as "useless."