Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old child in Gaza who pleaded on the phone to be rescued from a mangled car where she was surrounded by her dead relatives, was found dead alongside them nearly two weeks later, according to her family and the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
Hind’s body was located in the Tel al-Hawa section of Gaza City on Saturday after Israeli forces retreated from the area. The bombed-out remains of an ambulance dispatched to rescue her were found close by.
Hind had stayed on the phone for around three hours with the Palestine Red Crescent Society on Jan. 29, desperately pleading for help, the agency said.
She was reportedly fleeing the city with her aunt, uncle and cousins when they were caught in gunfire. It was Layan Hamadeh, Hind’s 15-year-old cousin, who initially called the Red Crescent for help until falling silent.
The Red Crescent shared audio from the trapped kids on social media, where it horrified listeners worldwide.
“They are shooting at us. The tank is next to me,” Layan is heard saying in audio released by the agency.
“Come and take me, will you come and take me?” Hind can be heard saying later. “I’m so scared. Please come. Please call someone to come and take me.”
Hind eventually said that it was getting dark, and she was afraid of the dark.
The Red Crescent said that the agency felt it was safe enough to send an ambulance four hours after receiving the call, according to Reuters. But the agency lost contact with the ambulance, leaving the young girl’s fate uncertain until Saturday.
A Red Crescent spokesperson told the BBC that the ambulance crew had caught a glimpse of Hind before gunfire was heard on the line.
“Hind and everyone else in the car is martyred,” Baha Hamada, her grandfather, told Agence France-Presse, adding that other family members were finally able to reach the area because Israeli forces retreated around dawn.
Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, blamed her death on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden, AFP said.
“I will question before God on Judgment Day those who heard my daughter’s cries for help and did not save her,” the mother told AFP.
The Red Crescent alleged “deliberate targeting” by Israeli forces, “resulting in the killing of our colleagues Yusuf Al-Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, who were just meters away from the child Hind.”
HuffPost has reached out to the Israeli army for comment.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 28,000 people since the militant group’s October 7 attack on Israeli civilians, which reportedly killed around 1,200 people and sparked the war. As of last month, around 10,000 of Gaza’s dead were estimated to be under the age of 18.
Around 1.5 million people are believed to be squeezed into the strip’s southern city of Rafah, facing down a warning from Netanyahu to “evacuate.” With the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Israel to the north and east, and an unwilling Egypt to the south, it is not clear where they would go.
