The nephew of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was one of two Israelis killed in Saturday’s crash of a Thai Airways Airbus in the Himalayas.
Uzi Peres and Dr. Rafael Sharon were among the 113 people aboard the plane who were killed when it slammed into a forested mountainside in Nepal while enroute from Bangkok, Thailand, to Katmandu, Nepal.
There was no sign of survivors.
An official at the Katmandu airport said the plane appeared to have caught fire after crashing into the mountainside. It was not immediately clear why the plane had struck the mountain. Rescue operations were hampered by thick clouds and heavy rain. But airline officials speculated that the crash was caused by technical failure.
Peres was born in Israel but lived for the past 20 years in Paris, where he worked as a film director. He had been on a business trip to the Far East and had planned to return to Israel to join his wife and three young children for their annual visit home with their families.
Sharon, 57, was head of the blood bank at Hadassah-University Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. He had been sent to the Far East by the Foreign Ministry to advise the Nepalese and Burmese health authorities on setting up blood banks.
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.
