Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who had been missing for almost two weeks amid the fighting in Gaza, was found dead along with several of her relatives, her family reported this Saturday, accusing Israeli forces of having killed them.
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The girl's body was found in a car near a gas station in the Tel al Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City., after Israeli tanks withdrew from the area, his family said. From that car, a few days ago, Hind, frightened, asked the Palestinian Red Crescent for help by phone for hours, surrounded by the bodies of six relatives and with the sound of gunshots in the background.
This case has become an example among the Palestinians not only of the horror of the Israeli offensive but also of the difficulties of emergency services in helping victims in the midst of the bombings.
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“Hind and everyone in the car died,” his grandfather, Baha Hamada, told AFP. “They were found by members of (our) family who went looking for the car and found it near the gas station,” an area until now inaccessible due to the Israeli military presence, he explained.
The burned-out ambulance in which two paramedics rescued the body of 6-year-old girl Hind Rajab.
They were found by members of (our) family who went looking for the car and found it near the gas station.
Hind's mother, Wissam Hamada, denounced “the scoundrels of Netanyahu, Biden and all those who conspired against Gaza and its population”.
When consulted by AFP, she said she wanted to question them “before God about that day when my daughter asked for help (…) without anyone coming to rescue her.”
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The Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, confirmed in a statement that “Hind Rajab died at the hands of the (Israeli) occupation forces along with everyone who was with her in a car.” .
The family had told AFP this week that The girl and other relatives were in the car in Gaza City when they ran into tanks that apparently opened fire on them.. They were trying to escape from Israeli forces in the Tel al Hawa neighborhood.
This Saturday, the lifeless bodies of the two workers who went to treat Hind in a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance were also found at the scene, after the call alerted them to his situation.
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Hind Rajab, the 6-year-old Palestinian girl.
“The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance was found to have been bombed in the Tal al Hawa area of Gaza City, resulting in the death of crew members Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed Al Madhoun, who had been missing since the rescue mission of the Hind Rajab girl 12 days ago,” the Red Crescent reported in a statement this Saturday.
Hind's disappearance went viral after it was spread the call that Layan Hadama, Hind's 15-year-old cousin, made to rescue teams after they were the only survivors of an Israeli artillery attack that January 29 against a vehicle in which the rest of the family members died: Layan's parents and his four brothers.
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“I called my brother on the phone and his daughter Layan answered. She told me that her parents and three brothers had been killed and that she was alive with Hind. We tried to calm her down by telling her that we would call an ambulance,” said the grandfather.
Hind then spoke to her mother on the phone. The girl said she saw the ambulance coming. “His mother heard the sound of a car door opening and then lost the connection,” he added.
In the call, two things were heard: the teenager saying that they were inside the car very close to an Israeli tank and, later, the dull roar of shrapnel accompanied by screams. Since then, Nobody heard from Hind again, not even the Palestinian Red Cross that went to look for her.according to his family.
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The burned-out ambulance of the Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics.
The Israeli forces “deliberately attacked the ambulance”, which was found in the Tal Al Hawa neighborhood, south of Gaza City, a few meters from the vehicle that was transporting Hind and from which the Red Crescent received the call for help. as reported by a Red Crescent source.
And when the Palestinian Red Crescent contacted the same number that made the first call again, it was little Hind who answered; she surrounded by the lifeless bodies of her relatives, including Layan's.
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“She was afraid, she begged us to go look for her, to please go look for her. Maybe she said it a hundred times in the three hours we spoke,” Nebal Farkash, spokesperson for the Red Crescent, explained to EFE this week.
The car in which Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian, was pleading to be rescued.
She was afraid, she begged us to go look for her, to please go look for her. Maybe she said it a hundred times in the three hours we talked.
Hours later, the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed a safe route to go look for her, after the rescue had been coordinated with the Israeli Army; but Hours later, the ambulance never arrived and they were never able to establish communication with the two paramedics who went for her, and whose bodies were found this Saturday..
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At the moment, the Israeli army has not responded to questions from some media about the shooting at the car full of civilians, or about the whereabouts of the missing.
For now, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) this Sunday to investigate the death of the 6-year-old girl in Gaza, and that “prosecute the Israeli war criminals” whom he accuses of killing the minor, her family and the emergency workers who went to rescue her.
“The execution of the girl Hind Rajab (6 years old), her family and the Red Crescent crew (of the ambulance that transported the minor) requires that the International Criminal Court assume its responsibilities, issue summonses and arrest warrants. investigation against the perpetrators and prosecute Israeli war criminals,” the ANP Foreign Ministry said in a statement this Sunday.
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For the ANP, “this crime is considered a vivid and clear example of the massacre committed by the occupation forces against civilians in general and children in particular.”
The war in Gaza broke out on October 7 when Islamist militants killed more than 1,160 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped around 250 in an attack on Israeli soil, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.
Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip.
In response, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas and launched a vast military offensive in Gaza, which has already killed 28,064 people, mainly women and minors, according to the Islamist group..
To date, more than 11,500 children have died in more than four months of Israel's military offensive that has claimed the lives of almost 28,000 Gazans, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.
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Gaza City has been practically isolated from the rest of the Palestinian territory for weeks.
The United Nations has denounced the impossibility of delivering humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of people who remain in the north of the Strip, cruelly attacked since the beginning of the war in October.
INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL
*With agency information
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