Shifting winds blow hundreds of thousands of the flying pests across the Egyptian border; volunteers asked to look to the skies
Southerly winds on Friday blew a new swarm of locusts into Israel’s Negev Desert, raising fresh concern of damage to crops over the weekend.
The large swarm, the second to be blown into Israel over the Egyptian border in the space of a week, is thought to number hundreds of thousands of insects.
An Agriculture Ministry plane was tracking the advance of the locusts, and, as of Friday afternoon, placed them at Moshav Kmehin in the Ramat Negev region near the Egyptian border.
Earlier, the ministry asked for volunteers to patrol the region to look out for the incoming pests.
“If the winds bring the massive swarms from Egypt to here, we are going to be in big trouble,” said Yankale Moskovich, a farmer from Ramat Negev. “The best-case scenario is that all it brings us will be dust storms.”
