Gaza –
A six-year-old girl who went missing in Gaza last month was found dead in an Israeli attack. His body was found with several relatives and two paramedics who tried to save him.
Six-year-old Hind Rajab was trapped under gunfire in Gaza City and begged for help, hiding in his uncle’s car, surrounded by the bodies of his relatives.
An audio recording of the call between Hind and the emergency call operator showed that the six-year-old child was the only one still alive in the car, hiding from Israeli forces among the bodies of his relatives.
The voice on the other end of the phone was small and faint; the voice of a six-year-old child, heard on a cell phone from Gaza.
“The tank is next to me. Move.”
Rana Faqih, an officer at the Palestinian Red Crescent’s emergency call center who received the boy’s call, tried to keep his voice calm.
“Is it very close?”
“Very, very,” answered the small voice.
“Will you come and get me? I’m so scared.”
There was nothing Rana could do except continue the conversation.
Hind left his home in Gaza City with his uncle, aunt and five cousins on January 29 to look for a safer place.
That morning, the Israeli army had ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas west of the city and move south.
As Hind’s uncle drove towards al-Azhar University in the city, the car unexpectedly encountered an Israeli tank. They stop near a gas station for safety, and appear to come under attack.
In the vehicle, the family called relatives for help. One of them contacted the emergency headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent, some 80 km away in the West Bank.
At around 14:30 local time, an operator at the Red Crescent call center in Ramallah called Hind’s uncle’s cell phone number, but it was his 15-year-old daughter, Layan, who answered the call.
In the recording of the phone call, Layan told Red Crescent staff that his parents and siblings had all been killed, and that there was a tank next to the car.
“They shot at us,” Layan said, before the conversation ended with gunshots and screams.
When the Red Crescent team called back, it was Hind who answered, her voice barely audible, lost in fear.
It soon became clear that he was the only survivor in the car.
“Hide under the chair,” Rana Faqih ordered him. “Don’t let anyone see you.”
“He was shaking, sad, asking for help,” Rana recalled.
“He told us [bahwa kerabatnya] already dead. But then he described them as ‘sleeping’.
So we told him ‘let them sleep, we don’t want to disturb them’.”
Hind kept asking, over and over again, for someone to come and get him.
Three hours after the call, an ambulance was finally dispatched to save Hind.
Meanwhile, the Red Crescent team has contacted Hind’s mother, Wissam, and connected her phone line to the call.
Hind cried even more when he heard his mother’s voice, recalled Rana.
“He begged me not to hang up,” Wissam told the BBC.
“I asked him where his wound was, then I distracted him by reading the Quran with him, and we prayed together. He repeated every word I said after me.”
It was dark when the ambulance crew informed the operator that they were approaching the location, and would be searched by Israeli troops.
That was the last report of news from their colleagues and from Hind. Communication links to the team of paramedics who were dispatched to the field and to the six-year-old girl they came to rescue were cut forever.
For several days after the incident, neither the Red Crescent team in Gaza, nor Hind’s family, could reach the location because it was in an active combat zone controlled by the Israeli army.
On Saturday (10/02), paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent finally managed to reach the area, which was previously closed as an active fighting zone.
They found the black car in which Hind and his relatives were traveling, its windshield and dashboard smashed to pieces, bullet holes lodged in the side.
BBCThe windshield and dashboard were smashed to pieces, bullet holes littered the sides.
A paramedic told reporters that Hind was among six bodies found in the car, bearing witness to gunfire and attacks.
A few meters away were the burnt out remains of another vehicle, its engine strewn on the ground.
This, the Red Crescent said, was the ambulance sent to collect Hind.
The ambulance crew, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, were killed when the ambulance was bombed by Israeli forces, the organization said.
In its statement, the Palestinian Red Crescent accused Israel of deliberately targeting the ambulance as soon as it arrived at the scene on January 29.
“Occupation [Israel] “deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite prior coordination so that an ambulance could arrive at the scene to rescue Hind,” he said.
BBCThe ambulance driven by the Palestinian Red Crescent medical team was completely burnt out
The Palestinian Red Crescent told the BBC it took several hours to coordinate access with the Israeli army to send paramedics to Hind.
“We have coordinated, we have the green light,” Palestinian Red Crescent Bulat spokesman Nibal Farsakh told the BBC.
“When you arrive, [para kru] made sure that they could see the car that Hind was trapped in, and they could see it. The last thing we heard was continuous gunfire.”
A recording of Hind’s conversation with a telephone operator shared publicly by the Red Crescent sparked a campaign to find out what happened to him.
Hind’s mother said that before her body was found, she had been waiting for her daughter’s arrival “any day, any time”.
Now he is demanding accountability.
“For everyone who heard my voice and the voice of my daughter’s pleas, but did not save her, I will question them before God on the Day of Judgment,” he told the BBC.
“Netanyahu, Biden and all those who collaborate against us, against Gaza and its people, I pray against them from the bottom of my heart.”
At the hospital where she was waiting for news about her daughter, Hind’s mother, Wissam, was still holding the small pink bag she had kept for her daughter. Inside, there was a notebook where Hind practiced his handwriting.
“How many more mothers do you have to wait to experience this suffering? How many more children do you want to kill?” he said.
We asked the Israeli army for confirmation about its operations in the area that day, and about Hind’s disappearance and the ambulance sent to pick him up. But Israeli soldiers we contacted said they were looking into it.
The rules of war state that medical personnel must be protected and not targeted in a conflict, and that injured people must be given the medical care they need to the greatest extent possible and with as little delay as possible.
Israel previously accused Hamas of using ambulances to transport its weapons and fighters.
(haf/haf)
2024-02-13 01:22:37
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