Yishai Rosales hours before his death. The IDF officer was killed in an accident at an IDF training base in southern Israel. Photo: Netzah Yehuda Battalion.

JNS.org – Some 2,000 people on Thursday attended the funeral of Mexican-born Israel Defense Forces Capt. Yishai Rosales—killed days earlier in a training exercise at the Tze’elim Base in southern Israel—at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

During the exercise, a soldier with the Armored Corps’s 75th Battalion fired an 81 mm mortar shell that exploded right next to Rosales, who was taking part in a different drill nearby. Rosales sustained critical wounds and died shortly afterward. Another soldier was lightly wounded.

Yishai’s father, Aharon, bid his son an emotional farewell.

“You have gone away and left us with broken hearts, but we know you are in heaven,” he said. “The day will come when we will meet again, our dear son. In the meantime, the Holy One, Blessed be He, will watch over you among the righteous. Your mother and I are waiting for you and your gigantic smile to walk through the door, but we know it will never happen again….We cannot imagine the Shabbat table without you. Every Shabbat we will leave a chair for you next to the table, so you can be with us. You have left us and taken a large part of our hearts with you.”