The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation reported this Wednesday the death of the Spanish-Israeli citizen Maya Villalobo Sinvany in Israel as a result of the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas last Saturday.
“Today is a sad day and there is bad news,” acknowledged the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, in statements on La Sexta, reported by Europa Press, after his department had announced Villalobo’s death.
The minister, who has specified that he has spoken with the father of the young woman from Seville and has conveyed his condolences to him as well as that of the entire Government, did not want to go into any detail about the exact circumstances of the death.
Albares had revealed on Monday that there were two Spaniards “affected” by the Hamas attack. In the case of Maya Villalobo, 19, she was doing military service in Israel. The young woman was at the Nahal Oz military base, very close to the Gaza Strip, from where Hamas launched its massive assault. Images had circulated on social networks showing the attack against this military position and in which some bodies could be seen.
Albares has not offered any news regarding the status of the other affected Spaniard, Iván Illarramendi Saizar, born 46 years ago in Zarautz (Gipuzkoa) and who lived in the Kissufim kibbutz, also close to Gaza. In his case, he disappeared after the Hamas attack along with his wife, a Chilean national. “We are in contact with his family and with the Israeli authorities to clarify all the facts,” he simply stated.
Thus, through a Foreign Affairs statement in which Villalobo’s death was announced, the Government has once again “reiterated its strongest condemnation of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel” while expressing “its deepest regret and all his condolences to the family and loved ones” of Maya Villalobo.
