Grieving Thai family pleads for return of son’s body from Israel

BAN SONG WAENG, Thailand – The last time Mrs Noopar Pansa-ard said she heard from her son, gunfire and explosions crackled in the background as he told her to stay strong if anything happened to him.

“I told him, ‘Don’t talk like that… My heart will shatter if you don’t return’,” Mrs Noopar, 63, said.

A day later, her son Somkuan Pansa-ard, 39, was killed during an attack by Hamas militants on Israel, where he went to work at a fruit plantation to send money back to help his family repay a loan.

Co-workers told his family on Sunday he was shot by Hamas militants. It was not clear where in Israel Mr Somkuan was killed.

“Losing my son… is the biggest loss in my life,” said his father, Mr Khraboan Pansa-ard, hunched over on a chair as Mrs Noopar sat nearby, clutching a portrait of their son and wiping away tears.

“I didn’t want my son to go because this country is at war. I feared he would lose his life,” said Mr Khraboan. “But he wouldn’t listen... He had to take care of the family to make them happy. He said that it paid well.”

Mr Somkuan was one of the 30,000 Thais, mostly from the rural north-east, working in Israel’s agriculture sector, according to Thai government data.

So far,

20 Thais have been killed and 14 taken hostage in the conflict

, the Thai Foreign Ministry has said. Some 5,000 Thais are looking to be repatriated home.

At Ban Song Waeng, Mr Somkuan’s village in north-eastern Thailand, families gathered outside his home to offer support to the grieving parents.

The next day, several relatives and friends accompanied his mother to the local temple to pray for her son.

“It’s tradition, to come to temple when we grieve to find solace and bring offerings to spread merit to the spirit of my son,” she said, kneeling with clasped hands on the temple floor as monks chanted blessings.

“We would like his body back as soon as possible so we can hold religious rites, as is our tradition,” his father Khraboan added. REUTERS