The little voice was crackled, high-pitched. "I'm so scared, please come!" begged Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Gazan child, in a call recorded on the Palestinian Red Crescent switchboard on January 29. At the time, she was the only survivor among the passengers in the car she was in, which was trapped under Israeli fire, in Tel Al-Hawa, in the south of Gaza City. When, after a few hours, the paramedics finally got the green light to move safely through the area, the switchboard lost contact with the two ambulance drivers and the little girl. Hind's call was widely shared on social media, causing a stir. After 12 days of silence, the remains of the little Gazan girl were eventually found with those of the other occupants of the car, on Saturday, February 10, once the Israeli forces had withdrawn from the area.
A few meters away, the remains of the ambulance dispatched by the Red Crescent were also identified, it had been pulverized by a powerful explosion. The bodies of the two rescue workers, Youssef Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, were found inside.
"The occupation deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite prior coordination to allow the ambulance to arrive at the site to rescue Hind," wrote the Palestine Red Crescent in a statement issued on Saturday, saying that its teams had coordinated the ambulance's movement with the Israeli army before it went on the mission. The Israeli military did not respond to Le Monde's questions.
On January 29, Hind had been entrusted to the care of her uncle, who was fleeing Gaza by car with his wife and children, as their neighborhood was increasingly threatened by fighting. The little girl's mother and the rest of the siblings left on foot. The girl's cousin, Layan Hamada, 15, was the first to call for help. "They're shooting at us, the tank is right next to me!" she anxiously described to the Red Crescent switchboard. The other passengers, except Hind, were already lying dead next to Layan. "Are you able to hide?" the rescue worker asked. Layan replied that she was in the car, then suddenly screamed. Heavy gunfire was heard. The teenager had just been killed.
Hind was now the only one left alive in the car. "For more than three hours, the little girl desperately begged our teams to come and save her from the [Israeli] tanks surrounding her, enduring the gunfire and the horror of being alone, trapped amid the bodies of her loved ones killed by Israeli forces," said the Red Crescent. According to the child's relatives, she suffered injuries to her back, hand and foot. The switchboard maintained telephone contact with her, in a simultaneous call with her mother, to try to reassure her before help arrived. It seems they were never able to reach her.
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