IDF officer killed in training accident laid to rest
Hundreds responded to the request of the family of Yishai Rosales, who was killed in a training drill on Tuesday, to attend his funeral on Mount Herzl.
IDF officer Yishai Rosales, who was killed in a training drill at the Tze'elim base on Tuesday, was laid to rest late Wednesday night at the military cemetery on Jerusalem's Mount Herzl.
Hundreds responded to the request of Rosales' family to attend the event.
Rosales, 23, was an officer in the Kfir Brigade. His relatives – including his parents Aharon and Elisheva and their five children – made aliyah from Mexico in 2001. They lived in Tel Zion, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Kochav Ya'akov in the West Bank, before moving to the Beit Meir moshav in the Jerusalem Hills.
Rosales studied in a yeshiva for two years and then joined the army's Nahal Haredi battalion where he progressed to the rank of first lieutenant. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of captain.
Rosales' father, speaking at the funeral, said: "Yishai, I don't have the words to begin to part from you. You were the best, all the time. It's been 24 hours since you've no longer been with us and I'm hearing so many stories from everyone that I didn't know.
"I always knew you were the best, but the best at home. Now I know that you were the best outside our home as well," he continued. "You've left us and taken a big part of our heart with you."
Michael, Yishai's brother who served with him in the Nahal Haredi battalion, said: "He was a tremendous person. I don't think there was anyone who knew him and didn't love him."
Rosales was killed during a course for company and battalion commanders when a force from the 75th Battalion of the 7th Armored Corps Division fired a mortar shell in the wrong direction.
Rosales was participating in another drill nearby when a piece of shrapnel from the mortar shell, which fell in an open area, hit him in his upper body, killing him.
