Sgt. Ofek Sharhabani, who was moderately-to-seriously injured in the Golan Heights grenade accident on Sunday, has been communicating with his parents using notes, while two other lightly injured soldiers were released from the hospital on Monday.
Sgt. Sharhabani, aged 20 from Bat Yam, is hospitalized at the ICU of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. His eyes are bandaged after shrapnel from the grenade's explosion injured both his corneas and retina, and he remains on a ventilator. He is also suffering from shrapnel injuries to the rest of his body, and fractures in his hand and legs.
Sgt. Shlomo Rindenow and Staff Sgt. Husam Tafash, who were killed in the accident, were laid to rest on Monday afternoon.
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Scene of the accident (Photo: Avihu Shapira); the two killed soldiers, Staff Sgt. Husam Tafash and Sgt. Shlomo Rindenow.
(צילום: אביהו שפירא )
"We talk to him and he knows we're by his side," said Sharhabani's father, Ilan. "He can't talk because he's on a ventilator. This morning, my wife asked Ofek questions and he wrote short answers, even though he couldn't see what he was writing."
"I asked him, 'What happened, Ofek?'" mother Ilanit said in tears. "He wrote, 'The driver came out (of the jeep) with the grenade.' He also wrote, 'Stop,' 'I warned them' and 'Miracle I survived.'"
"He asked us in writing, 'What about Shlomo?'" Ilanit continued. Sharhabani was referring to Sgt. Shlomo Rindenow, who was killed in the incident. "I told him Shlomo was seriously injured, I did not tell him that he was killed. We don't want to tell him about the fatalities at this point."
An initial investigation into the incident found that around 7:10am on Sunday morning, a military patrol jeep was returning from a routine brush cleaning operation on the border with Syria.
When the jeep approached an IDF outpost on the foothills of Mt. Hebron, an altercation ensued between the driver and the soldiers in the force.
The IDF believes that the driver found a grenade in the jeep or nearby and approached the commander of the outpost, seemingly to ask about the grenade, and then accidentally set it off.
Ilanit expressed her frustration at what had happened. "Two people were killed and one seriously injured. And for what? Meaningless, truly meaningless. They weren't defending anyone or anything, it wasn't a terror attack, it was meaningless. Such a shame."