Second Lieutenant Ahiya Klein's eyesight is improving, and he can now identify numbers, reports Yediot Aharonot. This is the first time he was able to do so since being injured by a bomb planted by Hamas in a tunnel that the IDF discovered, on October 31.
The bomb went off as an IDF engineering team drilled into the tunnel, injuring five officers and soldiers. Second Lt. Klein was the worst injured of the group, and there was concern that he could lose his eyesight.
Yediot Aharonot reported that 2nd Lt. Klein has been moved from the trauma unit to the burn unit at the Sheba Medical Center.
His worst injury is to the eyes – especially his right eye. Last week he began to be able to see things from the corner of his left eye, and on Sunday he was able to identify numbers with this eye, too.
"He only read the top line on the board, but that says something,” his father, Yechezkel, said. “This is a process that takes a long time and we need a lot of patience.”
"We were very glad when he saw the numbers,” he added. “We said 'baruch Hashem' [thank God] and thank you very much. I hear from a lot of people that they are praying for him to get better, it is important that they know that it is indeed happening.”
Klein serves in the Combat Engineering Corps' Yahalom unit. He was initially hospitalized at the Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva and then transferred to Sheba, which is closer to his family's home at Kfar Etzion, a religious-Zionist kibbutz.
The explosive device that injured Klein went off as IDF soldiers were working to comletely destroy the terror tunnel that led from Gaza into an Israeli kibbutz. The tunnel was intended for carrying out an attack on Israeli civilians.
Arab terrorists do not differentiate between civilian and military targets and intentionally murder and maim children. The terror war known as the "second intifada" and launched in the year 2000 killed 1,178 Israelis in 9 years, 70% of whom were civilians.