The Israeli army admits, two and a half years later, to having killed Hind Rajab, the six-year-old girl shot with her family
At first the girl survived the attack when she was traveling with her family in a car, but she ended up dying
In January 2024, amidst the Israeli offensive against Gaza, Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl, was traveling with six other members of her family in a car in the Strip's capital. Suddenly, someone opened fire on the car. Unlike her relatives, who died during the attack, the girl survived the shooting, but days later a rescue team found her lifeless body next to two of the medics who had tried to save her in an ambulance.
The sequence of events shocked the world. The person who called the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency services was Layan Hamadeh, a 15-year-old girl. Very distressed, she said that the car in which she and her family were fleeing from Gaza City had been attacked by the Israeli army, and that her parents and siblings had died. “They are shooting at us! We are in a car, and the tank is next to us!”, the girl said. Moments later, a burst of gunfire silenced her voice forever. When the Red Crescent operators called her mobile, a six-year-old girl answered, Hind Rajab, Layan's cousin, who was also traveling in the car. Very scared, she explained that all the other occupants of the car were dead: her aunts and uncles and her three cousins. And she pleaded between sobs to be rescued: “I am very scared, please, come. Get me out of here”. It wasn't until days later that Hind's family was able to enter the city and find the car with the bodies. It had received 355 bullet impacts. Her case was eventually brought to the cinema by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania in The Voice of Hind, awarded in Venice.
The international scandal was drowned out amidst the constant news of atrocities committed by Israel against the inhabitants of the Strip. Now, two and a half years later, in a context marked by a theoretical cessation of hostilities that has not ended a constant trickle of Palestinian deaths at the hands of Israeli soldiers, the Israeli army has announced the opening of an investigation. In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces state that "after reviewing the results of the initial investigation, and taking into account the coordination errors of the Palestinian Red Cross ambulance, it has been decided to launch a criminal investigation headed by the Military Criminal Police Investigation Division".
Initially, Israel denied the version of events and said there were no Israeli troops in the attack area. Now, it acknowledges that it was army troops who opened fire on the vehicle "as it approached the soldiers".
