The bodies of three Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during the deadly 7 October attack have been discovered, including the remains of German-Israeli Shani Louk.
A photo of 22-year-old tattoo artist Shani’s twisted body in the back of a pickup truck went viral around the world and brought to light the tragic scale of the militants’ assault on communities in southern Israel.
The other two bodies have been identified by the Israeli military as those of a 28-year-old woman, Amit Buskila, and a 56-year-old man, Itzhak Gelerenter.
All three were killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival, an outdoor dance party near the Gaza border, and their bodies taken into the Palestinian territory, military spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said at a news conference.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deaths “heartbreaking,” saying, “We will return all of our hostages, both the living and the dead.”
Shani Louk’s father says the return of her body to her family has been a form of closure.
Nissim Louk told Haaretz his daughter “radiated light, to her and those who surrounded her, and in her death she still does”.
“She is a symbol of the people of Israel, between light and darkness. Her inner and outer beauty that shone for all the world to see is a special one.”
He said: “The tormented soul knows that there is a hole in the heart somewhere in Gaza. Today we got a final answer.”
In a statement, the IDF said the bodies had been recovered in an operation overnight. It said it had acted on intelligence gleaned from “interrogations of terrorists” who had been detained in Gaza.
Around 1,200 people were killed in an unprecedented and shocking attack when Hamas gunmen burst through the border, taking an estimated 252 others back to Gaza as hostages.
Half of those have since been freed, mostly in swaps for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire in November.
It is believed that around 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of around 30 more.
Meanwhile, Israel’s retaliatory war on the small enclave has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Netanyahu has vowed to both eliminate Hamas and bring all the hostages back, but he’s made little progress. He faces pressure to resign, and the U.S. has threatened to scale back its support over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Israelis are divided into two main camps: those who want the government to put the war on hold and free the hostages, and others who think the hostages are an unfortunate price to pay for eradicating Hamas. On-and-off negotiations mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt have yielded little.