Bruna Valeanu, 24, moved from Rio de Janeiro to Tel Aviv about ten years ago with her family in search of, among other things, more security.
A communication and marketing student at Tel Aviv University, Bruna was at the music festival in the southern district of Israel, less than 20 km from the Gaza Strip, which was attacked last Saturday (7), at the beginning of the offensives.
The family has not been able to contact her since then. According to Nathalia, one of her sisters who still lives in Rio, Bruna called their mother, who lives near the Israeli capital, on Saturday morning, but she was sleeping. Later, when she woke up to the warning sirens to seek shelter in a bunker, as the airstrikes intensified, she called her daughter, who allegedly said she was fine.
"Maybe not to worry our mother, who would certainly get very nervous," says Nathalia. But Bruna later contacted friends and coworkers and reported being in a wooded area, with shootings and many injured people around. The last time she viewed WhatsApp was at 9:21 am on Saturday. A friend who was at the party said they hid in a kibbutz, a kind of local agricultural community.
At some point, he managed to escape. Bruna stayed, as did one of her coworkers. There is no news of the two so far. Bruna has dual nationality and served in the Israeli Army until 2021. The last unofficial news the family received came from the brother of one of the people present at the festival, according to whom everyone, including Bruna, had been injured but could not be rescued.