A Filipina woman and her Israeli husband were killed when an Iranian missile hit a building in the northwestern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday, April 5, the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed two days later — marking the second Filipino fatality since US and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered the broader conflict five weeks ago.
The DFA declined to identify the victim, citing a request from her family for privacy. “We join the Filipino community in praying for her eternal rest and for strength for her family during this time of profound loss,” the department said in a statement Tuesday.
Her death comes roughly five weeks after Mary Ann Velazquez de Vera, a 32-year-old caregiver from Pangasinan, was killed by shrapnel on February 28 during an Iranian missile attack on Tel Aviv. De Vera died while guiding her elderly ward to a bomb shelter. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. personally confirmed her death, describing her as a victim of the retaliatory strikes that followed the US-Israeli offensive on Iran.
The war began on February 28, when the United States and Israel launched surprise airstrikes on targets across Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior officials. Washington and Tel Aviv stated their objectives as dismantling Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities and triggering regime change — though US President Donald Trump’s subsequent public statements have cast some ambiguity over those declared goals.
The Philippine Embassy in Tel Aviv is working to repatriate the Haifa victim’s remains, though the DFA cautioned that the process may face delays. Israeli airspace has been closing intermittently since hostilities escalated, complicating logistics for Filipinos still in the country.
Approximately 7,473 overseas Filipino workers were based in Israel as of November 2025, a fraction of the more than one million Filipinos spread across a Middle East region now engulfed in an expanding war.
