By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Eliyahu David Kay, killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem on November 21, 2021. (Facebook).
A South African was killed during an attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The deceased has been named as Eliyahu David Kay, a recent immigrant from South Africa who worked as a guide at the Western Wall.Authorities corrected the victim’s age that they had earlier reported.
Before working at the Western Wall, he had served in the military as a lone soldier (one of the soldiers from foreign countries who move to Israel without family) in the Paratroopers Brigade, until August 2019.
He raised the spirits of everyone. He did his holy work with dedication and loyalty,” the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said in a statement on Sunday.
Kay had been walking to work when the terrorist, an East Jerusalem resident whom Hamas identified as one of its members, opened fire.
He was taken to Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus, where he was pronounced dead.
Kay is to be buried Monday at 11 a.m, at Jerusalem’s Har HaMenuchot Cemetery.
He was the first Israeli civilian killed by Palestinian violence since the 11-day conflict in the Gaza Strip this May.
Four other people — among them a man whose condition was described as serious — were injured in the incident, which happened on Sunday morning near the Chain Gate entrance to the al Aqsa mosque compound, also known as the Temple Mount.
The assailant, who used an improvised automatic weapon commonly known as a Carlo, police say, was shot dead by police officers on the scene.
Israel’s public security minister Omar Bar Lev said the gunman was from the neighborhood of Shuafat in east Jerusalem and a member of the political wing of Hamas.
Hamas issued a statement identifying the attacker as Fadi Abu Shkaydam, calling him a heroic martyr and describing him as a local leader of the movement.
It said the attack was “a response to the attempts to desecrate Al Aqsa mosque.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told government ministers he was praying for the recovery of the wounded and had instructed security forces to prepare for possible “copycat attacks.”
“We need to be on heightened alert and prevent future attacks,” he said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Source: Fullview and News Agencies.