Tel Aviv - Thousands of Israelis bade farewell Tuesday to
six Jews killed in Mumbai's terrorist attacks.
The bodies of the couple who ran the Jewish centre of the ultra-
Orthodox Chabad movement which was attacked in the Indian financial
hub, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, an American Israeli, and his Israeli
wife Rivka, were taken in a funeral procession from Chabad Village,
east of Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem's Mount of Olives.
Four others were also buried in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv.
An Israel Air Force plane had earlier carried the bodies, as well
as a surviving toddler, to Israel, landing at Ben Gurion
International Airport near Tel Aviv late Monday.
A short ceremony including a Jewish prayer for the dead was held
at the airport, before the bodies were transported to Israel's Abu
Kabir pathological centre for final identification.
Four of the coffins were wrapped in Israeli flags and two in
Jewish prayer shawls, as four of the victims had Israeli citizenship
while the remaining two did not. They were an American Jew who lived
in Jerusalem, and a Mexican Jew whose family lives in Israel and who
had planned to immigrate to the country as well.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, a Chabad official from New York said the
Jewish centre in Mumbai's Nariman House would be rebuilt and named
after the Holtzbergs.
Turning to the couple's two-year-old son Moishe, who survived the
onslaught and was rescued by his Indian nanny, Kotlarsky said
'Moishe, you have no mom and dad who will take you in their arms.
You have no one to hold and kiss you. You will be the child of all
of Israel.'
The boy's nanny, Sandra Samual, had rushed upstairs, grabbed the
boy and run out the building after hiding out for more than 12 hours
in the downstairs storage room.
She has recounted that despite the gunfire and explosions she
heard, she decided to risk outside her hiding place after she heard
the boy, whom she had put to bed early the previous evening, crying
out for her. She found him standing next to the motionless and
blood-soaked bodies of his parents, both in their late 20s.
Israeli President Shimon Peres, who attended the service along
with lawmakers, Israel's chief rabbis and opposition leader Benjamin
Netanyahu, urged the world to combat global terrorism.
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews clad in black also packed
Jerusalem's religious Mea Shearim neighbourhood to pay their respect
to US citizen Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum, a kosher food supervisor in
his late 30s who was in Nariman House at the time of the attack.
Three more funeral services were held in the towns of Bnei Brak
and Petah Tikwa, east of Tel Aviv, and at the Yarkon cemetary, north
of the city.
At least 10 heavily armed men, who are believed to have reached
Mumbai by a sea, attacked the city during three days of terror that
ended Saturday, targeting two five-star hotels, a railway station,
the Jewish centre, a hospital and other targets. Some 188 people
were killed and over 300 injured. Thirty foreigners were among the
died.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story