German-Israeli Shani Louk’s father says that finally laying his daughter to rest will be a gift after her body was recovered from Gaza, months after she was killed in Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel.

Louk, a 23-year-old tattoo artist, was celebrating with friends at the Nova music festival just inside Israel before it was attacked by gunmen from the Palestinian Hamas group. Her body was soon seen in a video, slung across the back of a pickup truck, surrounded by gunmen and paraded through Gaza.

On Friday, the Israeli military informed her parents, Nissim and Ricarda Louk, that their daughter’s body had been found by Israeli commandos in Gaza. Nissim Louk said that to be sure, he had viewed photos.

“We also saw the tattoos on her hands,” he said on Saturday. “Now she will have her own place next to us and we can go there whenever we want. And she can rest.”

He said the funeral will be held on Sunday, which is Ricarda Louk’s birthday.

“I think Shani said ‘let’s give my mother a birthday present and let’s go back and be close to her’,” he added.

Having Shani’s grave nearby would be a comfort, said Ricarda Louk.

“Maybe we’ll find more peace,” she said.

Nissim Louk said there was also solace knowing Shani was doing what she loved best before she died and probably did not suffer. She was pronounced dead by Israeli authorities at the end of October, based on findings in the area of the Nova rave, where more than 360 people were shot, bludgeoned or burned to death.

Videos of a smiling Shani at the party, before the attack, surfaced in the following weeks.

“She was dancing the whole night. She was so happy,” Nissim Louk said. “She never thought that there is evil in the world because she was a free spirit. She saw it only for a couple of seconds.”

Around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 abducted in the Hamas-led attack, according to Israeli tallies. Israel responded by launching a military offensive to try to eradicate Hamas that is now in its eight month.

More than 35,000 people have since been killed in Gaza, the Palestinian health ministry says. Most of the coastal enclave’s population has been displaced and much of it has been laid to waste in the offensive, which has drawn fierce criticism abroad.

Ricarda Louk said she was pained by what she sees as ignorance and misinformation displayed at some US campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

“It’s horrible for us to see,” she said. “We can tell you from our own experience. We lost our daughter in this massacre.”

“There is no resistance that can justify what happened here,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

The Israel Defence Forces found the bodies of three hostages who were murdered by Hamas terrorists. Shani Louk (23), Amit Buskila (28), and Itzik Gelenter (53) were kidnapped and killed during the October 7 attack on the Nova Music Festival.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that the three were brutally murdered when they tried to escape during the attack. He said that their bodies were then dragged into the Gaza Strip.

Israel had confirmed the death of German-Israeli Louk, a 23-year-old tattoo artist, in late October. A video that circulated on social media at the time showed her half-naked body slung across the back of a pick-up truck and paraded through Gaza.

The 23-year-old had been paraded naked in a pick-up truck after being captured. In videos that were shared in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks, Shani is lying face down in a pickup truck. Her family says they identified Shani from her dreadlocks and distinctive tattoos.

But the family of 53-year-old Gelernter was “in total darkness” about his fate until Friday, his daughter, Yarden Pivko, told Channel 12 News.

“We held on to hope and had a lot of faith that the end would be different,” she said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the news “heartbreaking.” “This terrible loss is heart-breaking… We will return all of our hostages, the living and the deceased alike,” he said.

Thousands of young people had gathered on October 6 and 7 to dance to electronic music at the Nova festival, which was held near the Re’im kibbutz close to the Gaza border.

Fighters from the terror group Hamas crossed over into Israel and killed more than 360 people at the festival, according to the Israeli government.

The Nova festival victims accounted for nearly a third of the around 1,170 people killed in the October 7 attack, most of them civilians.

Israel launched a retaliatory offensive against Hamas that has killed at least 35,303 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.