Last update - 00:00 20/09/2007
Body of last missing Israeli in Thai plane crash identified
By Yair Ettinger and Zohar Blumenkranz, Haaretz Correspondent
PHUKET, Thailand - The body of the last missing Israeli passenger, Rachel Toufam, 23, was identified Thursday by the Israeli team working at the site of Sunday's deadly plane crash on Phuket island in Thailand.
The coffins of four of the Israelis were flown to Israel Wednesday night: Rotem Naouri and her husband Adi Naim, Tal Feldman and Yitzhak Biton. Also on board were the last of the Israelis who had traveled to Phuket to search for their relatives. The coffin of Hila Gershoni, from Holon, arrived in Israel Wednesday; her funeral will be held Thursday afternoon.
The Israeli team said that the coffins of Hofit Biton (Eliyahu) and of Lili Alon, Toufan's close friend, will be flown home Thursday. Their bodies were identified in the last two days.
Over the past two days, the Israeli team has also assisted two Jewish families, one from France and one from the United States, whose relatives died in the crash.
Wednesday, representatives of the Zaka rescue service at the scene asked the Thai authorities to allow them to take care of the remains of the Jewish Frenchman, whose family had requested Zaka's involvement. The family of the American victim sought the assistance of the Chabad emissary in Phuket, Rabbi Aharon Solomon. The request to Chabad came from the family via the U.S. Embassy in Thailand.
The investigation into the crash, which claimed 89 lives, is ongoing, even as the authorities struggle to identify more than 30 bodies.
The Transportation Ministry will send its top airline accident investigator to Thailand to participate in the investigation, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz announced Wednesday.
Yitzhak Raz will travel to Phuket at the invitation of Thai air transportation authorities. Thailand extended Israel a formal invitation to participate in the investigation of the deadly crash Wednesday.
A total of 89 people died in the crash when the aircraft slid off the runway and exploded after landing in heavy rain and high winds. Budget airline One-Two-Go's Flight OG269 from Bangkok split in two before coming to rest on an embankment.
Thai police have identified 36 dead foreigners so far. Two Israelis survived the crash and have returned to Israel.
"Israel's participation in the probe allows us to learn more about the incident, and we will have a closer look at how the investigation is progressing," the ministry's foreign relations officer Avner Ovadia told Haaretz. "Additionally, it will improve the probe's quality and credibility."
Experts from Australia and the U.K. are contributing to the investigation. The crash claimed the lives of at least eight Britons another eight are still missing and one Australian man.
The Convention on International Civil Aviation affords any state whose citizens were killed in a plane crash the right to participate in the investigation of the crash. But the convention grants only observer status, and the privilege of any information investigators uncover.