Avigail Ben Tzion, the two-year-old who suffered a serious head injury Thursday in a Muslim rock ambush in southern Jerusalem, was released from hospital Sunday and has returned home.
The doctors at the Children's Neurosurgery Clinic at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital will continue to follow her recovery.
Avigail's father, Assaf Ben Tzion, said Sunday morning on Channel 10 that her condition has improved markedly. “She doesn't completely understand why she is in the hospital and we haven't really explained it to her yet, but she is already responding to her surroundings and smiling.”
"In the last 24 hours, her condition has improved meaningfully but she is still inside the severe trauma that she suffered,” he added.
"She is no longer dehydrated like she had been, and she even laughs a little,” Ben Tzion said. “She is really at the initial stages of learning to speak but right now, other than a warm hug, we just tell her that everything is OK and that we are with her. We have not yet told her why she is there.”
Refael Herbst, an MDA paramedic who treated the girl at the scene of the crime, said shortly afterward: "When we arrived we saw a woman holding a baby aged about 2 years, with a bleeding wound in her head. She was apathetic and in a foggy state of consciousness. We gave her medical treatment on the spot. We were told she had been hit by a large rock as she was traveling in the car with her mother and two brothers, who sat beside her in the car's back seat."
"After initial medical care we began the evacuation, and continued giving her care inside the ICU ambulance. On the way to Hadassah Ein Kerem, in the course of the treatment, she began to recover and regained consciousness. When we took her to the trauma room in the hospital she was in moderate condition."