DAR ES SALAM: The body of a Tanzanian student who went missing in Israel after the bloody Hamas attack last month is due to be returned home on Sunday, his family said.
Clemence Felix Mtenga, 22, was one of two Tanzanians reported missing after the unprecedented Oct. 7 attack that saw around 1,200 people killed, according to Israeli officials. Tanzania’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Mtenga’s death in a statement on Nov. 18, but did not say how he had been killed.
“We were to receive the body today but there are changes. We expect to have it tomorrow,” his sister Christina Mtenga said by phone on Saturday.
She said the funeral would take place on Tuesday in the family’s home district of Rombo in the Kilimanjaro area of northern Tanzania. Her brother was supposed to graduate this week from the Morogoro University in eastern Tanzania where he studied horticulture.
“It’s a hard situation but we are coping,” Christina said.
“Clemence was polite, serious and hard-working. He was religious and loved other people.”
Mtenga and another Tanzanian student, Joshua Mollel, 21, went to Israel in September for an internship program in agriculture but both went missing after the Oct. 7 attack.
The head of Israel’s international development agency Eynat Shlein had said on X, formerly Twitter, that Mtenga was killed by Hamas on Oct 7.
Tanzania’s Foreign Ministry said in its update last week that Mollel was still missing.
The two students were among about 260 Tanzanian youths who went to Israel for an internship in modern farming, a partnership program between the two countries.
Many of the places worst affected by the Hamas attacks were Israeli agricultural communes lining the region bordering the Gaza Strip.