An Israeli woman was hospitalized with moderate injuries over the weekend after she was attacked by a wild boar while on a hike with her family in northern Israel.

Yael Pries, 48, was hiking with her family in the Ofer Forest near Haifa on a popular hiking trail when she was attacked by the boar, suffering injuries to her limbs and face.

MDA paramedics were unable to reach the scene of the attack on the hiking trail by ambulance, forcing them to carry their medical equipment by foot for about a kilometer in the forest. Upon reaching Pries they administered emergency aid and with the help of an Israel Police rescue team, carried her on a stretcher to the ambulance and evacuated her to Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera.

“Fortunately, the boar struck me from the side and not from the front,” Pries told Channel 12 News from her hospital bed. “One of its horns scraped my thigh. The boar was alone and I apparently got in its way. It was big and wasn’t afraid of me.”

Haifa and other Carmel region cities and towns have been suffering from an increasingly worsening problem of wild boars in the area, with the population growing and brazenly wandering around residential areas in broad daylight. At best, they are a nuisance, overturning garbage cans and eating students’ homework and at worst, can be dangerous, causing car accidents by walking in the streets at night and attacking people, including children.

In the past, the Haifa municipality kept the problem under control by culling the boars but the new mayor elected in 2018, Einat Kalisch-Rotem (Labor) banned the practice.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)