Bulgaria attack survivors recall chaos and tragedy

By Ben Sales

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Vered Kuza was standing with her daughter, Amit, on an airport shuttle bus at Sarafovo International Airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, when she suddenly heard a blast.
“It’s an attack!” Kuza, 54, shouted at Amit, 26. “We need to get out of here!”
She pushed her daughter through the door just as the bus exploded at about 5 p.m. local time July 18. Kuza was knocked unconscious. Her daughter landed on the ground, debris ripping into her left shoulder, through her chest and down to her liver.
When Vered Kuza regained consciousness, her feet “were swollen to a ridiculous size.” Her daughter was nowhere to be seen.
“Everything was broken,” Kuza said while lying in a hospital bed in a Tel Aviv emergency room last Thursday, her feet wrapped in gauze and plastic and a red No. 2 scrawled on her forehead. “There were body parts around me. I didn’t know what was happening. It was smoking, hellish. It was horrifying.”
Five Israelis died in the attack that Kuza survived. According to Israeli reports, the five deceased are Amir Menashe, 27; Itzik Kolengi, 27; childhood friends Maor Harush, 26, and Elior Priess, 26; and Kochava Shriki, 44. In addition, the bus driver and suicide bomber died in the attack.
Ynet News reported that minutes before the attack, Shriki called her sister and told her that she was pregnant for the first time. Shriki’s husband, Yitzhak, survived and spent hours searching for his wife.
After the bomb exploded, “I walked toward the exit and called to my wife, ‘Come toward the door!’” he told Ynet. “After a few seconds I realized she wasn’t with me. The fog was thick like sand, and I went to look for her but it was impossible to get through.”
Kuza was one of 33 Israelis injured in the attack to be flown back to Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport last Thursday afternoon and sent to hospitals throughout the country, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Her daughter was one of three Israelis who were too seriously injured to make the trip and remained hospitalized in Bulgaria.
The head of the IDF Medical Corps, Itzik Kreis, said that the injured passengers who arrived in Israel “got very good medical care in Bulgaria” and “were less seriously hurt than we expected.”
The IDF Medical Corps landed in Bulgaria July 18 to tend to the victims and bring them back to Israel. Kreis said that the injuries the corps saw were similar to those suffered by bus bombing victims in Israel.
A plane carrying 70 Israeli tourists in Bulgaria scheduled to fly home July 18 was delayed, but arrived the next day.
An airport security camera at the Sarafovo airport in Burgas revealed that the bomber was a Caucasian man with long hair and a backpack who had been wandering around the area for about an hour. He reportedly was carrying a fake Michigan driver’s license.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly accused Iran of sponsoring the attack. He called on “the world’s leading powers” to recognize “that Iran is the country that stands behind this terror campaign. Iran must be exposed by the international community as the premiere terrorist-supporting state that it is.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said he had information that the attack was the joint work of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Iran has denied the allegations.
Soon after the attack, Amit Kuza was taken by paramedics to a hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital. Her mother “sat on the side of the road,” unattended for two hours because she was deemed to be in stable condition, she said.
“I had no one to talk to,” Vered Kuza said. “I didn’t even have a glass of water. They don’t know English. It was primitive.”
Bulgarian officials told Kuza that her daughter was in Sofia and in a stable condition. But Kuza was not able to speak to her daughter until Thursday morning. Amit and the two others who had remained in Bulgaria were scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday evening.
When news of the attack reached Israel, Arik Kuza, Vered’s husband, called the Foreign Ministry to find out if his wife and daughter were alive.
“I called 50 times,” he said, standing at Vered’s bedside. “They put me on hold and I heard music. I waited for hours.”
Lying in her hospital bed, she spoke in a calm and even tone. With her daughter scheduled to arrive in a few hours, she said she felt lucky to be alive.
 

Colorado shooting suspect worked at Jewish camp

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

James Holmes, the alleged shooter who killed 12 in a crowded Aurora, Colo., movie theater early Friday morning, reportedly worked at a summer camp operated by Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles.
Holmes, 24, spent a summer working as a counselor for Camp Max Straus in Glendale, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. According to its website, the camp serves underprivileged children of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.
He is suspected of opening fire on the crowd at a midnight screening of the new Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.” Twelve people were killed and 58 were injured in the shooting spree.
Holmes was arrested shortly after the shootings. He reportedly set off smoke bombs before firing at the crowd. Law-enforcement officials deactivated his booby-trapped apartment Saturday.
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Randy Schwab, chief executive of Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles and director of Camp Max Straus, said of Holmes, “His role was to ensure that these children had a wonderful camp experience by helping them learn confidence, self-esteem and how to work in small teams to effect positive outcomes.” In a later e-mail, Schwab added, “That summer provided the kids a wonderful camp experience without incident.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Saturday expressing his condolences and those of the Israeli people to the families of the Americans who were murdered in the theater.
“All Israelis stand alongside the American people in mourning over this terrible tragedy which claimed the lives of so many,” Netanyahu wrote. “We well understand the pain and loss that you are experiencing.”