A Mexico City rabbi has been confirmed as one of the casualties of last week’s devastating earthquake in the region.
Rabbi Haim Ashkenazi, of the city's Kehillat Magen David synagogue, had been inside one of the many buildings which collapsed as the 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit the Mexican capital. His body was recovered on Saturday, with the death toll of the quake now standing at more than 300.
Mati Goldstein, the international rescue chief officer for the ZAKA Jewish emergency response organisation, confirmed: “Immediately after Shabbat we received an update from our team in Mexico that they had recovered the body of the missing Jewish man...The ZAKA team will remain until we receive an update that there are no more missing people.”
Emergency teams from a number of Jewish organisations, including IsraAID and iAID, have worked throughout the past six days to recover bodies from the wreckage of buildings – but also to rescue trapped survivors.
