Diamond industry officials identify Israelis killed in Namibia crash

Diamond industry officials have identified five passengers killed when their light aircraft crashed in a residential suburb of Namibia's capital Windhoek on Friday as Israeli diamond dealers.

Lawyer Chris Merkel, who represents Lazare Kaplan, the New York partners of local diamond cutter Nam-Gem, said the men were employed by Lazare Kaplan International.

Namibian diamond industry officials named the five dead Israelis as Shlomo Zilberberg, Shmuel Zigdon, Amit Cohen, Ilan Hadadi and Avichai Abarov.

Israel's Ambassador to South Africa, Ilan Baruch, who flew to Namibia on Saturday to deal with the incident, said he could not officially confirm the names of the five men. Since Israel has no embassy in Namibia, the Israeli Embassy in South Africa is working on the case.

Meanwhile, officers from the police forensics unit contacted the families of the Israelis, who are officially listed as feared dead, in order to collect DNA samples and have begun preparations to fly to Namibia in order to identify the bodies firsthand.

The Foreign Ministry has asked the police to prepare for the possibility that the Namibian government will not allow their entry. As of now, police have not received any of the relevant permits required to allow them to enter the country.

The crash occured on Friday afternoon, shortly after the Israelis took off in a chartered Cessna-210 after refueling in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

They were apparently headed to a lodge in the Etosha Pans game park in northern Namibia. About two minutes after take-off the plane crashed while attempting an emergency landing in a residential suburb of the Namibian capital.

"I was walking home back from the shop when I saw this aircraft flying really low over our area. The next moment, it flew right into that house there," a witness, Tjiruripo Tjeriko, said. The aircraft burst into flames on impact and was almost entirely engulfed by the flames, making identification of the victims very difficult. The pilot was also killed.