Shani Louk, 22, who was kidnapped by Hamas, is dead, the family of the murdered woman announced. Her body was found by the Israeli military. The woman had dual citizenship: German and Israeli.
The 22-year-old was one of the people abducted from a music festival held outdoors on October 7 near the border with the Gaza Strip. Palestinian Hamas crossed the border and armed civilians. Many festival participants were killed on the spot, some were kidnapped.
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On Monday, the family confirmed that they had been officially notified of Shani Louk’s death. “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of my sister,” wrote her sister Adi Louk on social media.
“We are devastated by the information about the death of 23-year-old German-Israeli woman Shani Luk (original spelling – ed.),” wrote the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Israel in an entry posted on the X platform (formerly Twitter).
“Shani, who was kidnapped from a music festival and tortured by Hamas terrorists, experienced unimaginable suffering. Our hearts are broken,” the ministry added.
Hostage recognized on the recording
The woman was recognized in a recording posted by terrorists on social media. The sequence through which the family identified Shani shows a partially naked woman with a distinctive hairstyle lying on a roadster with her face turned downwards. Amid shouts of “Allahu Akbar”, men trample on her body, one pulls her hair, another spits. The shot ended with the jeep driving away.
It was one of the recordings distributed by a Palestinian organization. The AFP agency, citing security experts, explained that the publication of these drastic materials is a deliberate propaganda exercise by terrorists intended to strengthen the narrative favorable to Hamas among its supporters and to intimidate its opponents.
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Despite the recordings, the family of the kidnapped girl believed that Shani was alive, although she was seriously injured – they received information from Palestinian sources that the young woman was being treated in a hospital in the Gaza Strip.
Main photo source: Ronen Tivony / Zuma Press / Forum