Spain’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed that one of two Spaniards affected by the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel has died.
The ministry named the 19-year-old woman as Spanish-Israeli citizen Maya Villalobo Sinvany (main photo). The ministry expressed its condolences to her family and said ‘the Spanish Government once again reiterates its strongest condemnation of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel’. It gave no further details about the woman.
Spain’s state news agency EFE and other media outlets, however, reported that Villalobo was on military service at the Israeli military base of Nahal Oz, near the Gaza border, at the time of the attacks. Her father is reportedly a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Seville.
Spanish media reported that before the Hamas terrorists entered the Nahal Oz base, Villalobo’s last message, addressed to her mother, was that she was ‘safe and well’.
The family did not hear from her again after 9.30am on 7 October. They told Spanish media that their daughter was ‘a very happy young woman with a huge heart and in love with Spain’.
Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has conveyed his condolences to the young woman’s family and friends and has reiterated his strongest condemnation of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
‘Dismayed by the news of the death of Maya Villalobo Sinvany,’ he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). ‘I want to convey my most sincere condolences to her family and friends.’
Spain’s foreign ministry earlier this week reported that another Spaniard was also affected in the attacks but gave no other details.
Spanish media named the missing man as Iván Illarramndi Saizar, 46, a native of Zarautz, a coastal town in the Basque Country, and who has been living in Israel with his wife in a kibbutz, approximately two kilometres away from the Gaza Strip.
ALSO READ: EU president calls Hamas attack an ‘ancient evil, terrorism and an act of war’.
El @MAECgob informa del fallecimiento de la ciudadana hispano-israelí Maya Villalobo Sinvany en Israel.
— Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, UE y Cooperación (@MAECgob) October 11, 2023
El Gobierno español vuelve a reiterar su más enérgica condena del ataque terrorista de Hamas a Israel… (1/2) pic.twitter.com/gAREk5F7Hc
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