At about 7 p.m., a bright, white burst of light illuminated the night sky five miles south of the Lebanon border. One of the two CH-53 Sikorsky helicopters smashed into an empty guest house, which exploded into flames.
"There was a huge explosion," witness Rachel Fromovitz told The Associated Press. "They crashed right above us, and the helicopters came down in a fiery blaze."
The accident appeared likely to raise new questions about Israel's costly involvement in Lebanon - as well as the decision to send in the troops by helicopters despite the stormy weather. Officials said the helicopters were ferrying soldiers to Lebanon as part of a troop rotation.
Smoke poured from one helicopter as it went down, Yoav Frenkel told Army Radio. "The second helicopter lit up in the air as it fell," he said.
Despite extensive damage in Shaar Yeshuv, a communal settlement in the eastern Galilee, there were no known injuries to anyone on the ground.
Military chief Lt. Gen. Amnon Shahak said the crash killed 65 troops serving in south Lebanon and eight air force crew members.
Dalia Golan, nurse who lives near the crash, rushed to try to help any survivors, but heard only "very, very weak cries" from the empty building that one of the helicopters hit.
"They must have been the last cries of the wounded who were trapped inside," she told Israel TV. "I bent down over the first of the victims whom I saw ... but there was no pulse, and everything was torn apart."
Hours later, amid a light snowfall, workers in a crane were still trying to fish out pieces of helicopter wreckage remaining inside the rubble of the destroyed house. Soldiers searched the site looking for more bodies and trying to dismantle the scattered ammunition.
Convoys carried the dead to a nearby army base for identification. Israel's Channel Two television showed pictures of bodies being carried away from the crash.
"This is a grave disaster, and a heavy heart goes out to the families of the victims," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. "The entire nation cries today for the loss of our young fighters."
Netanyahu called off a trip to meet with Jordan's King Hussein, scheduled for today, after receiving word of the crash. He has reportedly cleared his scheduled for the next several days, which would also postpone a planned meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat tomorrow.
Arafat and Hussein both conveyed their condolences to Netanyahu.
as did President Clinton in Washington. The Knesset planned a special session today to honor the dead.
Officials said an inquiry into the cause of the accident would begin immediately.
"As far as we know, the weather was not the problem," said Brig. Gen. Oded Ben-Ami, the military spokesperson.
Israel's worst previous military air accident was a 1977 helicopter crash that killed 54 people.
Yesterday's crash comes at a time when Israeli politicians are increasingly calling into question the wisdom of Israel's policy in south Lebanon, with some urging that Israel withdraw its troops.
In 1985, Israel established the so-called "security zone" in southern Lebanon to guard northern towns from guerrilla attacks, while pulling its troops out of a larger area of Lebanon that it had occupied.
More than 200 soldiers have died in the security zone since then, mostly in clashes with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas. According to army figures, 26 soldiers were killed in south Lebanon last year and four have been killed so far this year.
Hezbollah guerrillas issued a statement expressing joy at the crash, Israel Radio said.
Public Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani, a former general, said this week that Israel should withdraw because Israeli soldiers were too easy a target for Lebanese guerrillas. Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai rejected the idea.
Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres said the lesson of yesterday's disaster was that Israel needed to pay the "price for peace" with Lebanon and Syria.
That was an apparent reference to his support for returning the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for peace. Such an agreement would win Syria's backing for an end to the guerrilla war in Lebanon.
"The tragedy in Lebanon has to be ended. I don't believe it can be ended without Syria," Peres said, speaking from Geneva.
Military spokesperson Ben-Ami gave no indication that Israel would change its military strategy in Lebanon as a result of yesterday's losses.
"As long as there is no other alternative, it is the task of the army to protect its civilians along the border - and it will continue to do so," he said.
AP PHOTO
Firefighters hose down the remains of a home in the northern Israeli community of Shaar Yeshuv after a military helicopter crashed into it yesterday morning.