Louk, 23, was taken hostage as she attended the Supernova music festival near the Gaza border. This concert was suddenly attacked by Hamas on 7 October.
After Louk’s disappearance, an appeal by his mother Ricarda Louk, asking the German and Israeli governments to bring back Shani Louk, went viral on social media. She said in the video, “We were sent a video, in which I could clearly see our daughter unconscious in the car around the Palestinians and the Gaza Strip.”
After being taken hostage, Lauk was driven naked in a pickup truck. In a video shared soon after the terror attacks, Shani was found lying face down in a pickup truck, with her family saying they had identified her by her hair and tattoos.
Shani was attending the concert and in clips posted on social media she could be seen dancing and singing with her friends, hours before the Hamas group stormed the venue.
According to the German newspaper DW, Louk was trying to escape, but was captured by Hamas operatives, who took her to Gaza, where she was shown beating her.
As a military response to Hamas attacks, the Israeli army has intensified its ground offensive in Gaza. Officials say 1,400 people were killed, mostly civilians, while another 239 were taken hostage.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says Israeli air and ground attacks have so far killed more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians and more than half of them children.
