Friends of German woman filmed lying semi-naked in Hamas truck share heartbroken tributes

Friends of a young woman who was captured by Hamas fighters and paraded, motionless, through the streets of Gaza, have shared their despair and grief and her abduction.

Shani Louk, 23, was identified by her family as the semi-named victim in the deeply disturbing footage after her loved ones recognised the distinctive tattoos on her legs.

The artist and beautician had been among the revellers at a music festival, near Kibbutz Urim, which was ambushed by Islamist terrorists on Saturday.

At least 260 people were killed and dozens more injured when militants swooped down on the Nature Party gathering and opened fire.

Others, including Shani, were kidnapped and taken over the border to Gaza, and their fate remains unknown.

However, whilst the 23-year-old’s mother Ricarda Louk said she remains hopeful that her daughter is still alive, many of her friends appear to have assumed the worst.

Shani (left) and her mother Ricarda (right) who has issued public appeals for information on her daughter's whereabouts@shanukkk/Instagram/Bild

Photographer Gianluca Iarlori shared pictures of Shani, taken at Croatia’s Mo:Dem festival, showing her looking calm and happy.

In a moving post to Instagram, he wrote: “Dear Shani, I want to remember you like that. Dancing, smiling, celebrating love and life.”

He continued: “I didn't sleep last night. I had stuck in my mind that horrible video, about your body laying helpless in the back of the Hamas terrorists truck.

“You were just having fun in a festival and you ended up being brutally violated by those subhumans.”

He went on: “Our psytrance scene is all about peace, love and freedom.

“We're not supporters of any government who promotes violence, we stand with the whole human race on earth.

“We fight for human rights, we just want to be free and hope the same for every single human being”.

To the uninitiated, “psytrance” refers to a subgenre of music also known as “psychedelic trance”, whose fans claim to share spiritual and philosophical connections.

A second message, written by Iarlori or perhaps a different friend from their community, struck a more despairing note, branding the violence to which Shani fell victim a load of painful “nonsense”.

It read: “Dear Shani, you were just the first victim of this nonsense violence, in the name of what? A God? An imaginary line to draw on a map? Is this really more important than human life?

“Many people have already passed away and too many are still missing.”

And a third note said: “Dear Shani, I still can't believe this nightmare.

“I wish to wake up, tomorrow, and see you dancing again, surrounded by our tribe, our brothers and sisters, embracing and celebrating the joy of life in a dancefloor, our happy place.”

Then, using the Hebrew term Kapara, connoting love and affection, they added: “You'll always be in our hearts.”

The heartbreaking eulogies came as Shani’s mother told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she and her family were desperately searching for more information on her whereabouts.

Asked to describe her daughter, Ricarda said: “Shani was such a loving and peace-loving person,” she said, adding: “She likes to travel, she's an artist, she travelled a lot in the world and she has many friends abroad.

“She was there also with a tourist group – with Mexican and Guatemalan and European people – and most of them are also still missing. They have no idea where they are.

“They're probably also kidnapped together with her.”

Ricarda then recounted how she last spoke to Shani at around 6am on Saturday, shortly after the rocket fire began, to check that she was OK.

“[Shani] was panicked a little bit and she said she's going to take the car now and go to a safe location,” the brave mum recalled. “And then we stopped talking.”

‘Since then, I [haven’t heard] anything from her,” she continued, adding that the 23-year-old hadn’t picked up her phone.

“A few hours later, we got a video from a friend through social media and we identified our daughter on a pickup truck in the back, lying on the floor with the militant men around her and pushing her down and with arms.”

Asked if that was the last she’d seen of Shani, Ricarda replied that she and her family were desperately searching for news, but so far they hadn’t found anything.

“We saw that somebody tried to use a credit card in the Gaza Strip multiple times. That's all we have,” she said.

Armed terrorists seen parading woman kidnapped from Israeli music festivalwww.youtube.com

However, she added that she had been told by witnesses, who were later rescued, that they saw Shani running to her car in an attempt to flee.

But militants were “standing by the cars and [...] shooting so people couldn't reach their cars even to go away,” Ricarda said.

“And that's when they took her.”

Asked whether she believed her daughter may still be alive, Ricarda said that, based on her appearance in the video, “It looks very bad”.

And yet, she stressed: “I still have hope. I hope that they don't take bodies for negotiations, I hope that she's still alive somewhere.

“We don't have anything else to hope for,” she added. “So I try to believe.”

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