The ax attack on Tzvika Cohen at the Ma’ale Adumim mall. Photo: Surveillance footage/Screenshot.

Close relatives of the security guard critically wounded in Thursday night’s ax attack at a mall in Ma’ale Adumim broke down after viewing surveillance footage of the incident, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Sunday.

Tzvika Cohen’s family members, among them his parents and brother, Rahamim —  who suffers from post-traumatic stress from having himself been wounded in a Palestinian stabbing attack during the Second Intifada in 2000 — collapsed after watching their loved one hacked several times by a Palestinian terrorist, who escaped the scene.

Saadi Ali Abu Hamed, 21, from the nearby Palestinian town of Eizariya, was apprehended two days later by the Shin Bet security agency, after a relative phoned police and said the terrorist was ready to turn himself in.

Another indirect victim, according to Channel 2, was Rahamim’s 8-year-old son, who received footage of his uncle’s attack on Whatsapp, and since seeing it has been inconsolable.

Another of Cohen’s brothers, Moshe, made a tearful plea for the people of Israel to pray for his brother, who is still fighting for his life in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center/Ein Kerem. “The doctors had to stop in the middle of his surgery, when his condition deteriorated,” Moshe said. “He has serious wounds to his arm, lungs, neck and head.”

Two days after the attack, it was revealed that the terrorist worked at a bakery at the mall and knew his victim well, regularly encountering him to ask for keys to the eatery.

Moshe recounted that the attack in question occurred when Cohen was about to help the Palestinian, as a matter of course, when suddenly his Palestinian acquaintance attacked him with an ax, hacking repeatedly until Cohen was lying in a pool of blood. Moshe said that it took a full 20 minutes before his brother was discovered by two cleaning men on the premises, who immediately called an ambulance.

Cohen, 48, is a married father-of-four from Ma’ale Adumim, whose son’s bar mitzvah was supposed to take place in two weeks.