Hamas
Shani Louk’s mother: “At least she didn’t suffer”
The German Shani Louk, who has been missing since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, is dead, according to her mother. Photo
© Christoph Soeder/dpa
The family of German Shani Louk has been hoping for her release from the Gaza Strip for more than three weeks. But a call from the army brings bitter news.
The news is terrible, said Ricarda Louk. But it’s good to have certainty now. “At least she didn’t suffer.” Ricarda Louk campaigned for the release of her daughter and the other hostages with numerous interviews in international media.
Terrorists carried out massacres of civilians in Israel on October 7th on behalf of the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip. More than 1,400 people in Israel were killed during this and the following days. According to the Israeli military, militants kidnapped at least 239 people in the Mediterranean area, including several Germans.
DNA sample with bone fragments
Her daughter’s body has not yet been found, said Ricarda Louk. However, a sliver of a skull bone was found and a DNA sample was taken from it. The parents had provided the authorities with the necessary comparison material a long time ago.
The mother assumes that her daughter has been dead since October 7th – the 22-year-old may have been killed by a shot in the skull at the Supernova festival. Pictures and videos circulating on the Internet at the time showed the young woman’s body on the attackers’ pickup truck.
Her family said they recognized the young woman in the photos and shortly afterwards turned to the public to ask for help. Initially, Shani Louk’s family, some of whom live in Baden-Württemberg, assumed that the young woman was seriously injured in the head in the attack, but was alive and in the Gaza Strip. The family said they received this information from a “trusted person in the Gaza Strip.”
“The partygoers were hunted”
Orly Louk, Shani Louk’s aunt, described the dramatic scenes at the music festival as follows: “She was at a party, in the desert, in no man’s land. There she was dancing with a group of people. (…) There was shooting , the partygoers were chased. The young people were running, hiding, as far as I know. You can see what happened in the videos.”
19-year-old Israeli Noam Cohen barely survived the massacre on the festival grounds, as he said shortly afterwards. Together with around two dozen festival visitors, he hid in a shelter near a bus stop. But the terrorists threw several grenades into the bunker. He remembers shots, blood and body parts. “I saw people explode next to me, over and over again, body parts everywhere.” Of the more than 20 festival visitors in the bunker, at most three or four got out alive.
Another survivor reported how people were burned alive in their cars by the attackers. He himself was shot at from the air by two terrorists flying hang gliders.
The terrorists also committed massacres in numerous places in the border area. Pictures that the Israeli government later presented of the atrocities showed children being brutally murdered and burned and people being beheaded.
Family complains of lack of support
According to the military, 40 people are still missing since the terrorist attack. Because of the poor condition of many of the bodies, identification has not yet been completed.
In response to the massacres, Israel is flying air strikes in the Gaza Strip and is also attacking with ground troops. According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 8,000 people were killed.
Ricarda Louk also asked the federal government for help after the terrorist attack – including at a meeting with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) in Israel. The family complained that they had received little information from the German and Israeli authorities.
Orly Louk and her husband Wilfried Gehr were very critical of the meeting in mid-October: “Unfortunately, the feeling remains that the German Foreign Minister, the Ambassador and also the Chancellor really did not support us and all the families, and only used the affected families for their selfish media appearances have,” they said in a statement. But there’s no point in complaining about it. “We hope that this senseless war in Israel and all other wars will soon stop.”