ROME - At least 129 people were killed in Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, carried out by Islamist extremists. Amongst those killed in the attacks was 28-year old Italian student Valeria Solesin from Venice. She had been studying in France for for years, a PhD student at the Sorbonne, examining the role of women and the division between commitments at work and home. 

  She was attending a concert at the ‘Bataclan’, which was one of the locations of the mass shooting. She died at the entrance of the concert venue, shot as she was trying to enter. Solesin was with her boyfriend, Andrea Ravagnan, and his sister, both from Trento, as well as Ravagnan's sister's boyfriend, from Verona. All three managed to escape to safety.

  "This sort of thing usually happens to other people," her father, Alberto Solesin, told Italy's SkyTG24. "She had a scholarship and she would have finished her degree next year."

  She has been described by friends as a model woman and tenacious. 

  Renzi expressed his condolences at the G20 summit, "I express the condolences of the government and all of us to the family of Valeria. I do not think there are words, but we will do everything we can to remember this young researcher.”

  In a letter penned to her parents, Sergio Mattarella said the following, "Dear parents of Valeria, I am writing to offer condolences and solidarity, both mine personally and also of Italy as a whole. Valeria was a daughter of Italy and daughter of Europe. She was killed by a barbaric hand, fuelled by fanaticism and hatred against our civilisation, its values ​​of democracy, freedom and coexistence. Valeria was killed, along with many other young people because she represented the future of Europe, our future. Along with many friendly countries, we respond to this challenge of death and oppression with intransigence. We owe it to all the victims, we owe it to you, dear parents.”