Last update - 00:00 19/09/2007
Police identify body of seventh Israeli victim of Thai plane crash
By Yair Ettinger (in Phuket) and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondents
Israel Police representatives in Thailand identified Wednesday the body of Hofit Eliya, the seventh Israeli victim of Sunday's deadly plane crash on the Thai island of Phuket.
Police have thus far identified the remains of seven of the eight Israelis missing since the disaster.
The other six were identified as Rotem Naouri, 23, and her husband, Adi Naim, 25; Yitzhak Biton, 25, from Kfar Yona; Lili ALon, 22, from Jerusalem; and Tal Feldman and Hila Gershoni, two friends who were traveling together.
Earlier Wednesday, a plane carrying the two Israeli survivors of the crash, as well as Hila Gershoni's coffin, arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Wednesday morning.
The 25-year-old Gershoni was to be laid to rest on Wednesday afternoon in the Holon cemetery. The remains of four other victims are set to reach Israel on Thursday morning.
Vladimir and Isabella Freilichman, the sole Israeli survivors of the crash, were hospitalized on the island until their flight to Israel.
The work of identifying the bodies went into high gear Tuesday after the arrival of an eight-person team of forensic and pathology experts from the Israel police.
Professor Yehuda Hiss, head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, said that he and his colleagues are ready to complete the work along the rigorous requirements of the Thai authorities.
He said that DNA samples and fingerprints are necessary in order to avoid mistakes like those that occured furing the 2004 tsunami disaster.
However, the Israeli team was shocked to discover that the Thai authorities closed down the site where the bodies are kept by early afternoon. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni intervened, telephoning her Thai counterpart, so that the forensic team could continue their work into the night.
The team managed to nearly complete the identification of the Israeli crash victims. The energetic Israeli activity at the airport is only one part of an international effort to deal with the tragedy. Some 50 bodies have not yet been identified, and efforts are being made to find missing Thais, Australians, Irish, Iranians and Britons.
In the case of some of the bodies, no one has come to collect them. But the information center is full of family members, mostly Thais, silently screening dozens of photographs covering an entire wall near the building entrance.
Hila Gershoni's relatives accompanied her coffin on a flight that departed close to midnight Tuesday from Bangkok to Israel, after Israeli Consul Hanoch Amadi signed off on Gershoni's coffin in the presence of her family in Phuket. It was the end of a long, painful day for family members who had arrived to identify their loved one.
Gershoni's boyfriend, Omri Kriegel, also asked to identify her. "He was absolutely unwilling to pass on that," said Itzik Kriegel, while his son was in the ambulance on his own.
A soon as Omri recognized that his girlfriend had been killed, he began preparing himself for the moment he could part from her, alone, reading a prayer by her side.
"This is how seven years together have ended," his father said. "I am afraid that we will go through a long, difficult time with our son."
Hila's coffin was the first to arrive in Israel.
As part of the process, Shula Naim and Haim Naori, the parents of Adi Naim and Rotem Naori, were allowed to collect the remnants of the items belonging to their children, as well as those belonging to the couple's friends and fellow honeymooners Hofit and Tzahi Biton.
Gershoni's relatives also collected the bags of Tal Feldman, her close friend and travel companion.
"There is one bag that we cannot find and it is the most important for us," Gershoni's uncle, Alon Shnirer said. "It seems that in that bag was their camera. We want the photographs of Hila and Tal." The bag was not found.