Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday spoke to the family of the Indian caregiver who was killed on May 11 in a rocket attack by Palestinian militants from Gaza, and conveyed his condolences. Soumya Santosh, 30, who hailed from Kerala’s Idukki district, worked as a caregiver attending to an old woman at a house in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon.
She was talking to her husband Santhosh over a video call in the evening on May 11 when a rocket fired from Gaza directly hit the house where she was working. The details of the conversation the Israeli President had with the family were not available but an Adviser to Rivlin confirmed to PTI that “it did take place”. The Indian caregiver was living and working in Israel for the last seven years. She has a nine-year-old son whom she had left with her husband in Kerala. Her 80-year-old elderly charge survived the direct hit on the house and was hospitalised. The rocket shelter was at least a minute’s run away from the woman’s home and the pair could not manage to reach it in time. The home lacked a fortified room of its own. Soumya’s mortal remains were sent to India on May 14 in a specially arranged flight and reached her hometown the next day.
