The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has confirmed that there are two Spanish citizens who are victims of the Hamas attack in Israel. Both of them were lost last Saturday and diplomatic sources do not rule out any possibility regarding the status of the two compatriots. “We are trying to clarify and be able to help as much as possible,” explained the Foreign Minister.
The missing Spaniards, according to the same sources, are Maya Villalobo Sinvany, 19 years old, and Iván Illarramendi Saizar, 46 years old. The first has Spanish and Israeli nationality and she was doing military service at the Nahal Oz base—very close to the border with Gaza—when the attack took place. Her father, a resident of Seville, asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for help through social networks on Saturday after being unable to locate his daughter.
The second missing person is a native of Zarautz. Married to an Israeli, he lives in an Israeli agricultural commune just two kilometers from the Gaza Strip. According to the newspaper El Correo, which has managed to speak with relatives of the missing man, members of Hamas tried to access his house. Beforehand, the couple notified their relatives of the situation. According to his surroundings, when the Police arrived at the home, it was empty with no blood stains.
Regarding the repatriation of Spaniards who are in Israel, Albares has indicated that since yesterday Sunday “Iberia has begun to resume its flights”, after cancellations occurred “in the hours following” the attack, so he hopes that “a throughout today” the situation of these citizens who were trying to return to Spain is normalized.
Albares, who in recent hours has been in contact with his counterparts in the region, has acknowledged his “concern” about the situation on the border between Israel and Lebanon and the possibility of the conflict spreading to this area. For the minister, the priority now is the “immediate cessation of violence, that the people held against their will be released and to avoid the regional extension of this conflict.”
The minister has spoken with his European and regional counterparts and with the high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security of the EU, Josep Borrell, to “reflect together so that this situation of violence does not happen again”, a task in which “Spain is not going to haggle over any diplomatic efforts.”
The death toll from the conflict in the first two days exceeds 1,100. At least 260 bodies were found in the desert where a festival that Hamas attacked was taking place. Israel has admitted that Hamas militants are still entering from Gaza two days after the attack.
After flight cancellations in the first hours of the conflict, companies from several countries, including Spain, have sent flights to repatriate citizens due to the uncertainty in the area. The Spanish Embassy in Israel launched a message this weekend on the social network before traveling to Ben Gurion Airport, located southeast of Tel Aviv.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the travel recommendations to Israel included on its website, advises against traveling to the country while the current situation persists and in the face of a “potential rapid deterioration” of the conflict and the existing risks, especially on the borders with Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, considered “high risk areas.”
