Details are beginning to emerge about the three victims who died in this morning’s rocket attack in the southern Israeli municipality of Kiryat Malachi.
Photos: Rocket Victims Mourned by Friends, Family
Details are beginning to emerge about the three victims who died in this morning’s rocket attack in the southern Israeli municipality of Kiryat Malachi.
The three, 25 year old Mina Scharf, 49 year old Aharon Smadja and 27 year old Itzik Amsalem, lost their lives when a rocket fired from Gaza destroyed apartments on the top two floors of the building where all three victims lived, as previously reported on VIN News.
While some building residents went into the building’s bomb shelter when alarms went off at 8:00 AM this morning, one resident said that the shelters were not adequately prepared for any kind of attack, according to reports on Israeli news source Ynet.
“There were heavy items in the shelter and it wasn’t in any condition for so many people. Some tenants preferred to ride out the attacks in interior rooms of their apartments while others gathered in the stairwells and that is how this terrible catastrophe happened.”
Smadja, who lived on the third floor of the building, went up to the fourth floor in order to help the Amsalem family during the rocket attacks.
Smadja was a well known fixture in Kiryat Malachi and neighbors recalled that he and his wife Fanny longed to have children, but it was fourteen years before their prayers were finally answered with the birth of twins, ten years ago.
“There was incredible simcha in the neighborhood,” said Mendel Chalili, whose mother lives near the Smadjas. “Just ten months ago they were blessed with another daughter, and now all three children are orphaned. It hurts the heart.”
Neighbors remember Smadja as a big baal chesed who made sure to send food for poor people before every holiday. After suffering a heart attack in the past, Smadja closed his neighborhood felafel stand and spent his days learning Torah.
“Everyone loved him,” declared Chalili. “He had a true, good heart.”
Mira Scharf, a mother of three who ran the Chabad house in New Delhi, India, had been married to her husband Shmulik for five years. The Scharfs came to spend some time in Israel and were planning on taking part in a commemorative service in memory of the Mumbai massacre which took place almost four years ago.
“She was a tremendous person who lived her life modestly so that people in India could taste even the smallest drop of Yiddishkeit,” said Rebbetzin Chaya Scharf, the victim’s mother-in-law. “They built a mikvah in Delhi despite financial hardships and as a grandmother, I can only hope that I can measure up to her legacy.”
Shmulik Scharf had originally planned on going to the Kinus Hashluchim in New York this past week with a stop on the way home to raise funds in Panama, but those plans were derailed when a snowstorm hit Panama.
“If he had been gone, Mira would have certainly gone to her parents in Jerusalem and not stayed home alone in Kiryat Malachi,” said relative Shimshon Goldstein. “Maybe her life would have been saved.”
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The Sharfs were supposed to return to India before Chanuka. They did not come to Israel for her to give birth there. She was not in her 7th month of pregnancy.
Sorrowful
I’m crying. May Hashem avenge them with death & destruction on our enemies.
dont blame
dont blame her husband if he would have been gone her life would have been saved
yos
there are no words hashem yerachem
Saddened...
AT A TIME LIKE THIS HOW COULD ANYONE POINT FINGERS?! AND AT THE DECEASED’S HUSBAND!!??? Its a tragic and sad.
GadolHador
REVENGE!
:(
Bde!!!! May hashem protect everyone else
Mendell
Reality: When the tzeva adom siren sounds you don’t go out onto the balcony to take pictures of the Grad being hit by the Kipat Barzel. It is not 100% successful. And that’s the sad story of these two males. I am a coward; when I hear the siren I head for cover.
noooo
hashem yerachem
Heart breaking
Heart wrenching
No words
May the families be given the strength to continue
Boruch Dayan Haemes
benzion landa
Nekamah. My heart is broken
YG
If you can donate toys, handheld gaming devices (gameboy, psp, etc.), for the hospitalized children
Please donate to the Chabad House activities including beautiful new mikvah used by 1000’s of tourists and Jewish , Israeli community in Delhi| online at ChabadDelhi.myCharityBox.com
or in Israel by calling R’ Moshe Goldstein (Kfar Chabad) 052-214-7705 or R’ Zalman Berenstein 058-7090-770.
Zalman Lew
ARABS SHOULD DIE!!!