Sonya Peres, the fiercely private, wife of Israeli President Shimon Peres, has died in Tel Aviv. She was 88.

Her son-in-law and doctor, Dr Raphael Walden, told Israel Radio she died peacefully in her sleep yesterday.

Born Sonya Gelman in Ukraine, she emigrated to Israel as a child. She met Peres in secondary school and they married in 1945.

Before her marriage, she served as a British army nurse in a military hospital in Cairo.

The couple had three children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In her later years, Mrs Peres quietly volunteered for numerous organisations in Israel.

Throughout her husband’s decades-long career, she determinedly stayed out of the public eye. When Mr Peres became President in 2007 and moved to Jerusalem, she remained in their apartment in Tel Aviv.

In a revealing interview on his 87th birthday last year, Mr Peres called his years as president the happiest and most fulfilling of his political career.

“But on the personal level I’m not as happy, because I really miss Sonya,” he told the Yediot Ahronot daily. “She was the love of my life and has remained the love of my life.”

Mr Peres’ office said he heard the news of her passing in Jerusalem following a meeting with the French foreign minister and rushed to their Tel Aviv home.

Shortly before Mr Peres became president in 2007, Sonya was briefly treated in hospital with a heart condition. But she was not known to be ill in recent years.

“She was a symbol of modesty, simplicity and the love of others,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement. “She shunned the limelight all these years, preserved her privacy and worked tirelessly to help the needy. All who knew her admired and appreciated her.”