2023-10-11 14:45:26
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed this Wednesday the death of Maya Villalobo Sinvany from Seville, the 19-year-old Spanish-Israeli girl who was doing her military service at the Nahal Oz base, located a few kilometers from the border with Gaza. and that she had been missing since last Saturday, when the terrorist attacks by the armed wing of Hamas occurred on Israeli soil.
The Government, in a statement, has once again reiterated its “strongest condemnation of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel” and has expressed its “deepest regret and all its condolences to the family and relatives for the death of Maya Villalobo Sinvany.” Following the news, the acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, also conveyed his condolences to the relatives of the deceased and pointed out that “nothing justifies a terrorist attack.”
Until now his whereabouts were unknown and it was even suspected that he could be among the kidnapped people. Hamas militiamen entered these Jewish military facilities and kidnapped several Israeli soldiers, as could be seen in several videos released after the operation by the Ezedín Al-Qassam brigades. Dozens of attackers took over the base after sneaking through a border fence. Since then his whereabouts were unknown.
Maya’s father, Eduardo Villalobo, is a professor of Microbiology at the University of Seville and was the one who, through social networks, addressed the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, asking for help: “My daughter is missing, the phones they do not work”. Shortly after, he deleted the message and explained that the Embassy was already in contact with them.
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Until now, the family of the young woman from Seville was “dismayed” by the lack of news and claimed to have had no contact with her since 9:30 a.m. last Saturday, three hours after the ‘Al-Flood’ operation began. Aqsa’. “Maya is a very happy young woman, with a huge heart, in love with Spain, who knows how to receive and return the love of all the people who love her,” those close to her defined her.
A Basque man and his wife, missing
Villalobo was not the only Spanish citizen missing after the Hamas attacks. Foreign Affairs also confirmed on Monday the absence of Iván Illarramendi Saizarr, a 46-year-old Gipuzkoan born in Zarautz, who resided in the Kissufim kibbutz, also located near the border with Gaza. His wife Lorena Garcovich, of Chilean origin, is in the same situation, as confirmed this Wednesday by the National Police to the court of the National Court that has opened proceedings for these events.
Specifically, Judge María Tardón has agreed to accept jurisdiction to investigate the disappearance of these people. The magistrate indicates in her order that on October 9, Monday, a document prepared by the Madrid Information Service Headquarters was presented giving an account of the terrorist actions that occurred on October 7 and 8, in which she reported the disappearance of two Spanish citizens and the wife of one of them in a conflict zone. Although Foreign Affairs confirmed today the death of Maya Villalobo from Seville.
The document fell by distribution to the Central Court of Instruction number three which, once a report was requested from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, assumed jurisdiction to classify the facts within the criminal types of articles 571 et seq. of the Penal Code as it was an alleged crime of terrorism. Furthermore, it is up to the Spanish jurisdiction to investigate these events as there are victims with Spanish nationality, in accordance with article 23.4 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary.
“They were probably taken as hostages”
Iván Illarramendi and his wife Lorena Garcovich, who lived for several years in Bilbao, reside in the Kissufim kibbutz, with barely 300 inhabitants. This enclave is located less than two kilometers from the Gaza border and was one of the first to be attacked by members of the Ezedín Al-Qassam brigade. In the middle of the terrorist attack, they managed to write to her parents that they felt that someone was entering her house.
“We were able to talk on WhatsApp and she was asking for help because there were people inside the house,” said Danny Garcovich, Loren’s father and Iván’s father-in-law, who believes that both are “kidnapped.” Then, after 12:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, he lost contact with them, Garcovich told the Chilean media outlet T13. Danny has lived in Israel for three decades with his wife and his daughter Loren and is a multimedia manager at Ben-Gurion University, in the Negev region where his daughter and his son-in-law live. .
After the members of the Ezedín al-Qassam brigade of Hamas passed through the area, in Iván and Loren’s home there were no signs of gunshots, blood, and the house was empty. «In the houses there is an armored room to protect against bombings. In some cases, since they could not open the doors of the shelters, what these people (Hamas) did was set fire to the house, incinerating those who were inside,” Garcovich explained. «We have been lucky because they did not do that at my daughter’s house. “They arrived, broke everything they could, forced the door of the shelter and then took them out, and surely took them as hostages to use them as bargaining chips for prisoners who are in Israel’s prisons,” he added.
«We are sure that they have been kidnapped. “If they had been shot, we would know because the bodies would be there,” added Iván Illarramendi’s father-in-law. «What gives me a lot of hope is that they are like kidnapped people and not like people who have died in these attacks. While they are kidnapped, we hope to be able to recover them,” concluded Danny Garcovich, who like the majority of the kibbutz’s inhabitants were evacuated by the Israeli Army to a safe area near the Dead Sea.
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