March 5, 2003 – st.sgt. Eliyahu Laham, 22, of Haifa, was one of 17 people killed in a suicided bombing. Eli was on his way to visit his grandfather in the Carmel hospital, when he was killed.
The bus was traveling on the city’s main Moriah Blvd. Near the Carmel center, on the way to Haifa university.
The suicide bomber boarded the bus with the bomb strapped to his body, laden with metal. A total of 17 people were killed and 53 injured.
Twenty minutes prior to the bombing, Eli called his mother Nava and told her he was going to visit his grandfather ( her father ) in the hospital. His mother Nava, tried without success to convince Elie to wait until she returned from work and give him her car . Eli insisted on taking an earlier bus as he wanted to return home in time to watch a football game later on that afternoon. Twenty minutes later, Nava heard a radio bulletin message about a terrorist attack and began to make frantic phonecalls . When Elie did not pick up his cell phone after repeated calls
She rushed out of her workplace, notified her husband, and drove immediately to Rambam hospital, hoping that Eli was injured in the bombing.
Later on she was told by her colleagues that Eli left her a phone message, saying: “Mom, call me”…
Eli was found dead at the scene holding a pistol in his hand. After an investigation, it turned out that Eli had suspected the terrorist and tried exercising an apprehending protocol with the suspect, by aiming the gun at him. The terrorist then activated the bomb ahead of the planned station, at Horev center in Haifa, a large and crowded junction, a few stations ahead.
This information was retrieved by investigating the second terrorist, an Arab citizen, residing in Haifa at that time, who assisted the suicide bomber by handing him the bomb strap. That other terrorist was well informed about the original plan of activating the bomb in Horev center, and not as it turned out – at the less crowded entrance to Caremalia neighborhood.
Eli’s pistol was handed to his parents as a memorial.
Eli will be remembered as a hero who took a brave and heroic decision to stay and not to run away while saving only himself, a decision to do whatever he could to prevent that horrible bombing, at the cost of his own life, and to save as many people as he could.
