This morning (Monday), a shepherd from Givat Ohr Meir, (adjacent to Ofra) came to water his flock, like he does every day. He was horrified to see that the first sheep that drank from the water began to collapse and then died within just a few seconds.
The shepherd immediately moved the sheep away from the site, while trying to treat the dying sheep. So far, four sheep have died and additional sheep are in serious condition.
Army and police forces arrived later at the scene and collected evidence.
Details that emerged after the incident show that in the morning, when the shepherd arrived at the grazing areas, he noticed several Arabs fleeing towards the nearby village of Deir Dibwan, but he did not suspect that they had poisoned the watering hole. This comes three weeks after Arab rioters hung a plastic rifle dummy on a tree near the watering hole, apparently to drive the herders away from the area.
"This is a horrifying experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone - to see the sheep start collapsing and dying right before your eyes, but what happened here was just a miracle," recounted Yair Ohana, the shepherd. "I filled one bucket from the hole and poured it into the trough for the sheep, and just then someone called me on the phone. I stopped filling it for a moment while I was talking on the phone, and I saw the first sheep that had managed to drink the water fall to the floor and start to convulse. If the phone hadn't rung and I had continued filling, many more sheep would have died, God forbid," Ohana said.
"The Arabs are constantly harassing us in the grazing areas, because they understand even better than we do that sheep grazing will decide whether the area will become part of the Palestinian state or remain in Jewish hands. No matter how cruel the attacks, they will not make us leave and we will continue to go out to the pastures tomorrow to protect our homeland in the heart of the Binyamin region," Ohana added.
Yinon Magel contributed to this article.
