Former Sri Lankan policeman tried to save civilians and was injured
Sujit Prainkareh, 39 from Sri Lanka, was a policeman for 17 years in his country before he
came to Israel, where he works as a sanitation and maintenance worker at the Zikim beach.
When the rocket barrage began on Saturday morning he ran to the public shelter at the
beach, in which 10 civilians had also taken shelter. When terrorists arrived, they lobbed a
grenade into the shelter, and Sujit grabbed it and threw it back. The terrorists entered and
began spraying the shelter with bullets. Sujit was hit and fell to the ground with others
falling on top of him. He lost consciousness. All of the people in the shelter were killed aside
from Sujit and one other person.
When he regained consciousness, he realized that the only other survivor is no longer in the
shelter. He managed to crawl back to his dorm room, and bandage his wounds with a shirt.
Only at 13:30 he was evacuated by army forces and taken to the hospital. Since Sujit arrived
in Israel without a work permit, the State will not recognize him as an official victim of terror
and he is not receiving the medical care he needs– when he came to the hospital for follow
up treatment, he was refused on the grounds that he has no medical insurance. Four days
after the attack, he had to report back to work in order to earn money to sustain himself and
his family.
