Israeli woman killed in Berlin terror attack to be buried Friday
Dalia Elyakim, 60, to be laid to rest in Israel; close friend says victim and husband, who was seriously wounded, were a ‘dream couple’ and loved to travel
The Israeli woman killed in a terror attack in Berlin this week will be laid to rest on Friday, a friend of the family said Thursday, as arrangements were being finalized to bring her body to Israel for burial.
Dalia Elyakim, 60, was identified overnight Wednesday-Thursday as the sole Israeli fatality in the truck-ramming attack at a Berlin Christmas market on Monday, in which 11 other people were killed.
Elyakim will be buried Friday at noon at a Herzliya cemetery, according to Channel 10.
Her husband, Rami Elyakim, also 60, was seriously injured in the attack and remains in a medically induced coma in a Berlin hospital. The two were visiting the German capital from Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.
Moshe Egoz, a friend of the Elyakims, told Reshet TV that should the funeral go ahead on Friday, Rami would not be able to attend.
He described the pair as a “dream couple that loved life and loved to have fun and travel.”
Egoz said Rami was a childhood friend. He noted that he had introduced him to Dalia, adding that he had seen the pair three weeks ago when Rami confided suspicions his wife was planning a surprise.
“It was the trip to Berlin. They posted wonderful photos and we just can’t understand where this [tragedy] came from,” said Egoz.
The identification put an end to a four-day effort by authorities, crushing slim hopes that Elyakim was among several people injured in the attack who had yet to be identified.
Elyakim’s son and daughter had arrived in Berlin on Tuesday to help with the search for their mother and to visit their father.
The children were “very saddened by the news as they had hoped she was still among the unidentified injured,” an Israeli diplomat in Berlin, Leora Givon, told Channel 2.
The attack, Germany’s deadliest in recent years, has been claimed by the Islamic State group.
Twenty-four people remain in hospital, 14 of whom were seriously injured.
The truck struck the popular market outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church late Monday, as tourists and locals were enjoying a traditional pre-Christmas evening out near the Berlin Zoo station.
A manhunt was underway across Europe for the suspected truck driver, 24-year-old Anis Amri, a rejected Tunisian asylum-seeker, who was known to authorities as a potentially dangerous jihadist. German prosecutors offered a 100,000-euro ($104,000) reward for information leading to his arrest, warning he “could be violent and armed.”
Asylum office papers believed to belong to Amri, alleged to have links to the radical Islamist scene, were found in the cab of the 40-ton truck.
The twelfth victim, the hijacked truck’s Polish driver, was found shot in the cab.
Police Wednesday searched a refugee center in Emmerich, western Germany, where Amri stayed a few months ago, as well as two apartments in Berlin, the media reported.
But as the Europe-wide manhunt intensified, questions were also raised about how the suspect had been able to avoid arrest and deportation despite being on the radar of several security agencies.
“The authorities had him in their crosshairs and he still managed to vanish,” said Der Spiegel weekly on its website.
In a revelation likely to stoke public anger, German officials said they had already been investigating Amri, suspecting he was planning an attack.
The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Ralf Jaeger, said counter-terrorism officials had exchanged information about Amri, most recently in November, and a probe had been launched suspecting he was preparing “a serious act of violence against the state”.
Berlin prosecutors said separately that Amri had been suspected of planning a burglary to raise cash to buy automatic weapons, “possibly to carry out an attack.”
But after keeping tabs on him from March until September this year they failed to find evidence of the plot, learning only that Amri was a small-time drug dealer, and the surveillance was stopped.
Amri left Tunisia after the 2011 revolution and lived in Italy for three years, a Tunisian security source told AFP. Italian media said he served time in prison there for setting fire to a school.
He arrived in Germany in July 2015 but his application for asylum was rejected this June.
His deportation, however, got caught up in red tape with Tunisia, which long denied he was a citizen.
