Shani Louk

Shani Louk, a 23-year-old German-Israeli woman who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023 has been declared dead, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said. “We are devastated to share that the body of 23 year old German-Israeli Shani was found and identified,” the ministry posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday. A source involved with her identification told a news reporter. Here death was announced after forensic examiners found a bone fragment from her skull. The bone fragment was from the petrous part of the temporal bone, which is at the base of the skull, normally near the carotid artery, a major blood vessel that provides blood to the brain. A DNA test concluded the fragment belonged to Louk. This beautiful young lady was attending the festival in southern Israel when Hamas breached the border between Gaza and Israel. She was kidnapped at the festival and “tortured and paraded around Gaza by Hamas terrorists,” the foreign ministry statement said, adding that she “experienced unfathomable horrors.”

“May her memory be a blessing,” the statement said.

The bone fragment, combined with the circumstances surrounding the October 7 attack and video that appeared to show her unconscious on the back of a Hamas truck, led investigators to conclude these were her remains.

Militants blocked off the road to the festival from the north and the south during their October 7 attack, before swarming the sprawling site on foot, videos from the site showed. They then encircled the crowds on three sides, gunning them down and forcing them to flee over fields to the east.

“What we saw on the Gaza-Israel border goes far beyond a pogrom. We saw a slaughterhouse,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told Germany’s Bild newspaper in an interview in which he confirmed Louk’s death.

More than 220 people, including Israelis and foreigners, were also taken captive in the attack.

Since the attack on October 7, 2023, Israel has carried out a devastating campaign of air raids on Gaza, which it has placed under total siege, cutting off access to water, electricity, food and fuel.

Family members of those held captive have pleaded for their return and human rights groups and the United Nations have also called for the immediate release of the hostages.

On Monday, Hamas released footage that purports to show three captive women delivering a brief statement in which they blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the attack and call for a prisoner exchange to secure their release.

“She [one of the captives] blamed him [Netanyahu] for the failure of the October 7 attack, from preventing it from happening, for saying that no army was present, no one came to help us,” said Al Jazeera correspondent Sara Khairat.

Statements offered by people being held captive are often given under duress. Netanyahu denounced the video as “cruel psychological propaganda” in a response on Monday.

Shani was born on 7 February 2001 to an Israeli father and German mother, Ricarda Louk, who had lived in Ravensburg, Germany, and moved to Israel in the early 1990s. Sheand her family moved to Portland, Oregon in the early 2000s, and she attended kindergarten at Portland Jewish Academy. She was a resident of Tel Aviv, where she worked as a freelance tattoo artist, and also had a following as an Instagram influencer.

Shani’s mother, told a news reporter earlier this month that she last spoke to her daughter after hearing rockets and alarms sounding in southern Israel, calling to see if she’d made it to a secure location. Shani told her mother she was at the festival with few places to hide.

“The news of Shani Louk’s death is terrible,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X on Monday afternoon. “Like many others, she was brutally murdered. This shows the full barbarity behind the Hamas attack — who must be held accountable. This is terror, and Israel has the right to defend itself.”

Ms. Louk’s sister, Adi Louk, posted a picture of her in an Instagram story on Monday.

“With immense sorrow we announce the death of my sister Shani Nicole Louk,” she wrote.

We are living in such a sad world, as of 31-October-2023.