ADDIS ABABA, March 30: Israel’s ambassador to Ethiopia was in a critical condition on Wednesday after shooting himself in the head in an apparent suicide attempt. He was evacuated to Israel late in the night. Medical sources said Mr Grossman was “in a very bad state” after being found with a gunshot wound to the head in his apartment in Addis Ababa’s Hilton Hotel.
“He shot himself in the head in his room in the Hilton where he stays,” said a senior diplomatic source close to the investigation. “It wasn’t an assassination, we think he tried to commit suicide.”
“He is in a very bad state,” the source said, adding that Ethiopian authorities and officials at Israel’s small embassy in Addis Ababa were unaware of Mr Grossman’s possible motive for trying to take his own life. “We are very puzzled,” said the source.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli foreign ministry said the shooting did not appear to be a “terrorist” attack and that it had dispatched officials to Addis Ababa to investigate the incident and bring Mr Grossman home.
Mr Grossman, who is single, took up his post in Ethiopia three years ago and was due to be sent this week to take up a new position as Israel’s ambassador to South Africa. Although the Israeli embassy in Ethiopia is small it plays an important role in overseeing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s efforts to bring remaining Ethiopian Jews to Israel by the end of 2007.
Mr Sharon’s government in 2003 gave the green light for some 20,000 Falash Mura to immigrate under Israel’s law of return, which grants Jews anywhere in the world the right to make the ‘aliyah’ (ascent) to Israel and claim citizenship.
The Falash Mura are Ethiopian Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in the last century.
During Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991, about 35,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel. Their community in Israel now numbers about 80,000, including several hundred living in West Bank settlements. —AFP
