Lionel Messi helped save a 90-year-old Jewish grandmother from being killed by Hamas.
Ester Cunio’s kibbutz was stormed by Palestinian militants on 7 October, last year.
Eight of her extended family members were among the 253 people abducted and taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
A sick clip of Ester being forced to pose with a masked terrorist making the Islamic one-finger salute shocked the world.
READ MORE: Girl, 13, and boyfriend are arrested after woman found dead in fly-tipped fridge
Incredibly, the Argentine nan credits her survival to a chat about football superstar and eight times Ballon d’Or winner Messi.
She recently told how she heard knocking at her door and came face-to-face with two Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Ester recalled: “One of them asked, ‘Where is your family?’ I don’t have any family, I tell him. I am alone.”
She told the terrorist: “You speak Arabic, and I speak Hebrew poorly. I speak Argentine, Spanish… Do you watch football?”
When the militant replied yes, she said: “I am from where Messi is from.”
The gun-toting terrorist enthusiastically replied: “Messi! I like Messi.”
He then put his rifle in her lap and told Ester to make the V sign as the second militant filmed them for social media.
Some of her family have been released in exchange for prisoners, but others, including two of her grandkids, are still being held hostage.
Ester wants the former Barcelona and PSG star, 36 – now with Inter Miami – to know he saved her.
She added: “If Messi knows that I mentioned him and was saved, now I would ask for my grandchildren who are locked up there.
“I would tell him to please pray to God because they are guys worth gold.”
About a quarter of Nir Oz’s residents were either killed, kidnapped, or wounded on 7 October.
The massacre is the deadliest attack against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust.
READ MORE: VIDEO: Biker inadvertently films own death as he’s hit by lorry
