A worker at the Ashdod Port lost part of his hand Sunday when he was bitten by a shark. The man was evacuated by boat, then taken to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital.
He is currently in moderate condition.
The worker, who is believed to be in his late 20s or early 30s, was working with fish in cages at the port.
Shark attacks are rare in Israel, and shark sightings are not common on the Mediterranean coast. Shark sightings were previously reported in Ashdod in 2005, when fishermen caught three sharks in the area, one of them a massive shark at 5 meters long.
Shark sightings are more common in the Red Sea area. In April 2013 a resident of Eilat reported seeing a shark swimming just meters from human swimmers at a local beach.
In 2010, a tourist died of a shark bite on a beach in the Egyptian town of Sharm a-Sheikh on the Red Sea. Other swimmers were also attacked by sharks in the same area at around the same time.