A 14-year-old boy from the northern Israeli city of Ma’alot-Tarshiha was killed and 24 others were wounded on Monday when unexploded ordnance blew up during an annual class trip in the Ramim Ridge area of the Galilee Panhandle.

The boy was identified on Tuesday morning as Elazar Yair Wilensky, a ninth-grade student at the ORT Ma’alot religious high school. All of the wounded were students and teachers from the school.

According to an initial inquiry, one of the hikers apparently found a piece of ordnance and put it in a bag, where it exploded a short time later. The IDF is checking whether the device was a cluster bomb left over from Hezbollah fire. The army and police are investigating the circumstances, together with Israel’s Education Ministry.

As of Tuesday morning, the wounded were being treated at three hospitals in northern Israel. At Ziv Medical Center in Safed, 13 people were hospitalized, among them two children in serious condition, one of whom was sedated and on a ventilator. At Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, three were in serious condition, one in moderate condition and four in light condition. At Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, a 61-year-old teacher remained in serious condition after overnight surgery, a teenager was in moderate condition with shrapnel in his neck, and two other teens were in light condition.

Wilensky was the youngest of five siblings. His family described him as a bright, joyful boy who was a good and beloved friend and who “lived life to the fullest.”

The Ma’alot-Tarshiha municipality, led by Mayor Moti Ben David, expressed condolences to the family and said welfare teams and educational psychologists were supporting students, families and school staff. Funeral arrangements were to be announced.

The Education Ministry said its psychological and counseling staff were working with district and local authorities to provide emotional support at hospitals, schools and in the community, and that it had instructed schools to hold age-appropriate classroom discussions about the incident.

The ministry said it had complied with Jewish National Fund restrictions barring activity in areas affected by war damage, and that the trip’s planned route did not pass through the prohibited zone. It said the trip’s approval included explicit safety instructions forbidding participants from touching unexploded rockets or ordnance and requiring them to report any such items immediately. The route as actually taken is now part of the investigation, and the ministry said it would review its trip-approval procedures and safety guidelines in the coming days.