JERUSALEM: A collision involving a truck and a bus carrying Israeli Muslims returning from prayer at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque — Islam's third holiest site — killed eight people on Tuesday, police and local officials said.

At least 24 people were injured in the crash at a junction in southern Israel near several Bedouin towns, medical officials said. Most of the casualties were women, they said.

Israel’s Channel Two TV cited witnesses as saying that a tractor being ferried by the truck came loose and toppled into the bus.

The mayor of the nearby town of Rahat, Talal Al-Kariani, told the station that the bus passengers were mostly elderly, local Muslims, who go to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque in daily organized or weekly trips.