Fourteen people lost their lives in the tragedy in Italy, with the fall of a cable car in the region of Piedmont, while the local authorities are investigating the causes and conditions of the accident.
The only survivor is five-year-old Ethan Biran, who is being treated in the Intensive Care Unit and is fighting his own battle to stay alive. According to the doctors, what saved the five-year-old was his dad’s hug.
Doctors watching Eitan, who is still unconscious and has many broken bones, say that Amit’s father’s embrace worked protectively for his son, as he wrapped his arms around him in an instinctive embrace, which acted as a shield in the accident where Tal’s mother, Tom’s brother and his two grandparents who were with them were killed. His aunt and other grandparents are on his headrest at a hospital in Turin, where doctors say the little boy must have a brain scan to see how seriously he has been injured. The next two days will be crucial for his recovery, they added.
According to Ansa, those on the cable car came from five families. The three lived in Lombardy, one in Emilia Romana and one in Calabria.
The Foreign Ministry said five Israelis were among the victims: Amit Biran, 30, his wife Tal Peleg Biran, 26, their one-year-old son Tom Biran, who lived in Pavia, Lombardy, and her grandparents. Tal, Barbara Cohen Koniski, 70, and Yitzhak Cohen, 82, from Tel Aviv. The couple’s other son, five years old, is being treated in Turin with serious head and leg injuries. The management of the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital said on Monday that Eitan had undergone surgery and was now in an artificial coma. The child’s aunt, Amit’s sister, is in the hospital near him. “It was a quiet night, now all that remains is to hope,” said Giovanni La Valle, the hospital’s general manager.
Among the dead are 29-year-old Alessandro Merlo, his fiancée Silvia Malnati, the couple Angelo Vito Gasparo, 45, and Roberta Pistolato, Vittorio Zorloni, his fiancée Elisabeta Persanini, 38, and his wife Ma and Serena Cocentino, 27, and Mohammadreza Sahaisavadi, 23.
