Four Argentines have lost their lives in Israel as a result of terrorist attacks by the Hamas militant group, with authorities trying to locate three other Argentines who are missing.
Meanwhile, more than 235 requests have been made by Argentines to the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires seeking evacuation, authorities revealed.
The four missing individuals are Iair and Eitan Horn, sons of journalist Itzik Horn, besides a man whose first name is Yossi and is believed to have been kidnapped, multiple local outlets reported.
The latest confirmed Argentine death – the fourth – was that of Ronit Rudman, aged 55, who was at her home in the Holit kibbutz with husband Ronald Sultan, when terrorists entered the property and murdered her.
“It’s incomprehensible, deeply upsetting and there are no words for such pain, my dear brother and sister-in-law have been murdered. God shall avenge their blood. Rolan, son of Berta, and Ronit, daughter of Sarah,” Nathalie Sultan, Ronald’s sister, posted on Facebook, Perfil reported.
Hours earlier, the death of 80-year-old Silvia Mirensky had been communicated. She lived in a commune some 17 kilometres from Gaza, and died after terrorists set her house on fire and she could not escape.
Mirensky was in the panic room of her house in the kibutz. An explosion broke the glass of the room and an object which might have been a gas tank which set her on fire. A phone call she made to her family was replayed out on local television news channels.
“In the middle of the night on Saturday, the Palestinians broke the fence and burst into the area. They were shouting, filming their doings. They entered Ein Hashloshá and started knocking on doors. My two sisters, Silvia and Esther, live there. Silvia’s house is near the edge of the kibbutz”, said Zulema, one of the victim’s sisters.
She added: “Silvia ran to the panic room nearly all Israeli houses have. She spent the night there and early in ther morning, when she could hear no more noise, she went out to have breakfast. She was widowed a year ago and she was very nervous”.
“We don’t know exactly what they threw, it’s pure conjecture, but it was a kind of bomb that started the fire, the reality is they burned her alive. It was 9 in the morning."
Zulema explained that afterwards there was silence and uncertainty and the electricity had been cut off, and the phone was dead. “We only confirmed what happened in the afternoon,” she said.
Mikanoski had been born in Buenos Aires and is among the more than 800 people who have lost their lives as a result of the Hamas attack that began on Saturday.
Missing
Horn specified that his sons Iair and Eitan “had been missing since yesterday [Saturday], when the guerrilla fighters went in” and that they were together at the time of the attack. “There are no names of people missing, no one from the government has been in touch. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone,” he said.
Besides the journalist’s sons, the Israeli Foreign Office added another Argentine, a man named Yossi who lived in the Nir Oz kibbutz, an area with a high Argentine population. His whereabouts and those of his wife Margrit, from Peru, are unknown. The couple are believed to have been kidnapped.
The Argentine Foreign Office confirmed today there are 235 requests by Argentines in Israel to be evacuated after the conflict broken out after Hamas’ attacks.
“We can send our own airplane, we need to finish the manifest, to do it as we did on another occasion with a repatriation mechanism,” Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero told a local radio station.
The Foreign Ministry said Monday that 235 requests by Argentines in Israel had been made seeking evacuation following the outbreak of conflict.
Argentina's government has provided an emergency phone number to be used by Argentines in Israeli territory to communicate should they need assistance, and for their families to request information or reported missing persons.
“The Consulate General in Tel Aviv has a 24-hour emergency telephone number: +972 52 597 8359 (local number)”, they posted on social networks, while they also made available an email address: [email protected].
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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