Three of the victims killed in the suicide bomb attack on Friday night were refused burial in municipal cemeteries by the hevra kadisha. The religious burial society is claiming that the three were born of mixed marriages - a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother - and therefore could not be buried in Jewish cemeteries.

The kibbutz movement has offered to bury the victims in its secular cemeteries free of charge. The Israeli Reform Judaism Movement has also offered to help bury the victims, after denouncing the refusal of the hevra kadisha. "Dealing with questions of the victims' eligibility to be buried as Jews at a time like this is profane," said Rabbi Yehoram Mazor, secretary of the Reform Rabbinical Council.

"It is inconceivable that these children are good enough to be killed in suicide bombing attacks, yet cannot be given a proper burial," charged MK Sofa Landver (Labor). Landver helped the families find alternative burial solutions in the kibbutzim, after accompanying immigrant families to body identifications at the Abu Kabir Pathology Institute in Jaffa yesterday.

Shinui party chair MK Yosef Lapid said that Islamic Jihad and the hevra kadisha were cooperating in wounding the Russian immigrants. "Islamic Jihad strikes at the living, and the hevra kadisha strikes at the dead," he raged.