The body of Nitzan Mendelson will be flown to Israel from Malta later this week for burial in Kibbutz Hulata, in Galilee, which was her home. Mendelson, mortally wounded by the hijackers of Egyptair Flight 648 in Malta more than a week ago, died yesterday at St. Lukes Hospital there where she had been kept alive by heart and lung machines in the intensive care unit. Doctors had pronounced here clinically dead several days ago.
They would not say today whether she died a natural death or was detached from the life-support machines. She had been in a coma ever since she was shot in the head by a hijacker on November 23. Her parents were at her bedside since then.
The death of the 23-year-old Israeli woman brought to 60 the number of fatalities resulting from the Egyptari hijack. Mendelson and her travelling companion, Tamar Artzi of Kibbutz Revavim in the Negev, were on a holiday trip to Egypt and the Far East when they became hijack victims. Artzi, 24, was also shot by a hijacker but only slightly wounded. She was due to return to Israel with her parents today.
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