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JERUSALEM — Blood is thicker than thousands of miles.

That's the moral of the story of an Ethiopian-born soldier in the Israeli army who was reunited with family members this week after trekking through Ethiopia to find them.

Tazazu Tasame, 23, had asked the Jewish Agency for Israel to help locate his family members who stayed in Ethiopia when he and some other relatives immigrated to Israel in 1992.

The agency learned that Tasame's mother did not want to leave Ethiopia because she was caring for his grandmother. After he learned that his grandmother had died, he decided to make the trip.

After landing in Ethiopia in November, Tasame walked for three days to find his mother, finally making contact with her in a village near the Ethiopian-Sudanese border.

His mother, younger sister and older sister and her children agreed to come to Israel.