First three Israelis wounded in Istanbul blast land at Ben Gurion

Three of the 11 Israelis wounded in the suicide bomb blast in Istanbul Saturday landed at Ben Gurion International Airport early Sunday and were taken by ambulance to Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.

The three were identified as Pnina and Ron Greenfield, and Pnina’s sister Anat Kama.

Staffers from the Magen David Adom rescue service, led by the organization’s CEO Eli Bin, are working with Red Crescent officials in Turkey’s largest city in an effort to locate and bring home the rest of the Israeli victims as quickly as possible.

Three Israelis were killed in the blast. ZAKA, an Israeli organization that collects and prepares the bodies of dead terror victims for burial, dispatched a team to help bring those killed back to Israel.

In a video posted by MDA of a meeting between a MDA crew and one of the injured Israelis — apparently Pnina Greenfield — the sense of trauma from Saturday’s events becomes clear.

“You’re happy to hear Hebrew? So we’re here,” one MDA staffer said.

“Other than your leg, everything’s okay?” asked a doctor in Hebrew.

“Other than the heart, everything’s okay. We lost three friends,” the injured Israeli answers.

According to a statement from MDA, the first three wounded Israelis were put on a commercial flight, and another three were expected in Israel on a later flight.

The remaining wounded will be flown home in the coming days on a MDA-chartered plane, the group said, but noted, “the seriously wounded are not in a condition that allows us to place them on a plane.”

At least one Israeli underwent emergency surgery in an Istanbul hospital late Saturday. Two were said by Turkish medical officials to be in serious condition.

All the Israeli injured and dead were said to be part of a single culinary tour group that walked past as the bomber, identified by Turkish authorities as Savas Yildiz, detonated himself.

Authorities said Yildiz was likely sent to Istanbul at the behest of the Islamic State terror group.

“Our first three days [in Istanbul] were incredible,” Greenfield told Israeli journalists late Saturday.

“We didn’t expect what happened. It was terrible. If we hadn’t run [to the front of the group] in order to take a picture, I don’t know what would have happened. I was always the last one in the group, and the ones at the back were hurt the worst,” she related.