Hind Rajab, the little girl in the phone call who had become a symbol of the war, was found dead in Gaza

Hind Rajab is dead. The lifeless body of the 6-year-old Palestinian girl missing for almost two weeks in the midst of the clashes in Gaza has been found together with those of the other members of her family. Hamas announced this, putting an end to the hope of finding the little girl still alive whose voice recorded in a dramatic phone call to the Red Crescent had become the symbol of the drama experienced by tens of thousands of children trapped in the clash between Israel and Islamist militias. Two Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) rescuers who had been sent to rescue Hind and her relatives were also found dead nearby. The PRCS accused the Israelis of killing them “deliberately”.

History
The little girl had become a symbol for a phone call. «The tank is next to me. It's moving…will you come get me? I'm so scared”. The desperate appeal with a small voice made even weaker by fear was from Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a car in Gaza City under a rain of fire and surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives on the phone with Ran Fagih, a call center operator in emergency of the Palestinian Red Crescent. One of the many tragic stories of the war in the Strip tormented by Israeli bombings was told by the BBC, which managed to speak to the little girl's mother, Wissam, and reconstruct the ordeal of an odyssey that ended badly.

It was Monday 29 January when the order arrived from the Israeli army to evacuate the areas west of Gaza City and move south. “We were terrified and wanted to escape” recalls Wissam, who set out on foot with her eldest son towards the Ahli hospital, east of the city. Little Hind was found a place in her uncle's car, with other relatives because “it was very cold and raining”. After a short stretch of road, the car found itself under fire from Israeli tanks. It was at that point that the family closed in the car called their relatives for help. One of them contacted the emergency headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent, 80 km away in the West Bank. From Ramallah the call center called Hind's uncle's cell phone, but his daughter Layan, 15, answered and said how her parents and siblings had been killed. “They're shooting at us,” says the little girl in the phone call, which was recorded. Then the screams and silence. When the Red Crescent operator calls back, it's Hind who answers, with a voice almost imperceptible, suffocated by fear. “Hide under the seats,” Rana tells her, “don't let anyone see you.” It soon becomes clear that she is the only survivor and that she is still in the line of fire. Rana stays on the line with the little girl for what seems like an infinite amount of time while she sets in motion negotiations with the Israeli army to allow an ambulance to reach the location. «She was shaking, she was sad and asking for help», recalls the operator. «She told us that her relatives were dead. But then she said they were asleep. So we told her to let them sleep because we didn't want to disturb them” while she continued begging for someone to come and get her. No one managed to get to her little girl, but a Red Crescent team instead reached her mother when she arrived at the hospital and connected her. She was crying, Rana continues. “She begged me not to hang up,” Wissam told the BBC. “I asked her where she was hurt, then I distracted her by reading the Koran with her and we prayed together.” At that point Wissam heard the car door being opened and Hind saying she saw an ambulance. Then the line went dead.