The mother of a young German woman feared dead after her body was paraded around by Hamas gunmen during the terrorist group’s blitz attack on Israel says she may still be alive after all.
In a new video message on Tuesday, Ricarda Louk appealed to authorities to help evacuate her 22-year-old daughter Shani Louk from a hospital in Gaza, Bild reports.
“You have to act quickly and get Shani out of the Gaza Strip!” she pleads. She went on to say that Palestinian sources had reached out to the family to report that Shani had been hospitalized after she was kidnapped from a music festival that came under siege by Hamas on Saturday.
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“We now have evidence that Shani is alive but has a serious head injury and is in critical condition. Every minute is critical,” Louk said, urging the German government to take action and not “argue about questions of jurisdiction.”
The 22-year-old tattoo artist was seen in one of the most distressing videos of the weekend bloodshed. Her mangled, half-naked body—with one leg bent at an unnatural angle—was pictured lying in the back of a pickup truck surrounded by jeering Hamas gunmen.
The video was reportedly the first information her family received about her fate after she had called her mother right when Hamas first attacked, promising to hide as gunfire could be heard in the background.
“We recognized her by the tattoos, and she has long dreadlocks,” Tom Weintraub Louk, Shani’s first cousin, told The Washington Post, adding that the family was holding out hope that Shani might still survive.
Her mother posted video appeals begging for any information on Shani’s whereabouts, and the family was alerted to Shani’s credit card being used at a shop in Gaza on Sunday.
