'INS Eilat' sailor's tomb to be unveiled

[Gimel]

The IDF will unveil on Tuesday a tombstone belonging to a sailor buried in a mass grave with 15 others who died in the 1967 sinking of the INS Eilat.

The ceremony is scheduled to take place at the Haifa Military Cemetery. A naval honor guard will escort the family of Menahem Cohen, whose name finally appears on a separate tombstone, to the sailor's final resting place, where the family will be able to mourn privately.
Also expected to attend the ceremony are Col. Tzila Neuman, the head of the IDF Unit for Locating Missing Soldiers and former OC Manpower Maj.-Gen. (res.) Gil Regev.

It was decided "beyond reasonable doubt" that the remains of Cohen were in the grave. The ceremony will bring to an end years of legal battles by the Cohen family to open the mass grave and subject the remains to DNA testing.

The INS Eilat, a World War II-era destroyer which became the navy's flagship, was hit on October 21, 1967, by a series of Styx surface-to-surface missiles fired from an Egyptian missile boat inside Port Said harbor. The missiles killed 47 of the ship's crew and wounded another 90. The incident aroused worldwide interest because it was the first occasion in which a warship had been sunk by missile fire.

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