JERUSALEM, Aug 5: Plans to bury a young Jewish extremist who mowed down four Arab Israelis during a shooting spree on a bus were in limbo on Friday after a string of authorities all refused to sanction his burial.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz declined to give Eden Nathan Zada, a soldier who had been absent without leave for several months, a military funeral while the mayors of his hometown and the radical settlement where he had been living in recent months both washed their hands of the extremist.

Mr Zada was lynched by a furious mob on Thursday evening after emptying his weapon on a bus in the northern Arab Israeli town of Shfarat. A statement from his ministry said that Mofaz had deemed that the 19-year-old was “unworthy of being buried alongside those who fallen in war”.

Meir Nitzan, the mayor of his hometown of Rishon Letzion, close to Tel Aviv, also said he would not allow Zada to be buried in the local cemetery. Authorities in the northern West Bank settlement of Tapuach, where Zada had been hanging out in recent months, also tried to distance themselves from the whole affair by claiming that he had not lived there.

While the wrangling continued, Zada’s body was left lying in a morgue in Tel Aviv. Israeli media said that one possible alternative could see Zada buried in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, close to the Palestinian city of Hebron, following suggestions from residents.

Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish extremist who shot dead 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs 11 years ago, is buried in Kiryat Arba. —AFP