Families all over Israel are asking to adopt seven-month-old Assaf Mordechai whose parents were killed by terrorists in Kfar Yuval Sunday. The infant, who under went surgery for the removal of grenade fragments at Safad Hospital, was reported to be improving today. His mother, 22-year-old Simha Mordechai, died in the hospital yesterday of wounds inflicted by a grenade. The same grenade killed her husband, Yaacov Mordechai who had joined an army unit assaulting his home in Kfar Yuval where four terrorists were holding members of his family hostage. All four terrorists were killed, two of them by Yaacov Mordechai himself before he was fatally wounded.
His brother, Bezalel Mordechai, also wounded by the terrorists, was recovering today in Safad Hospital. An Israeli soldier wounded in the assault was discharged from the hospital yesterday.
The future of young Assaf probably will be decided by the Kfar Yuval settlement committee. Relatives of the baby have asked to be appointed his guardian but adoption is also possible.
Meanwhile, Lebanese farmers were seen leaving the border regions today apparently in fear of Israeli reprisal raids.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
