“Imagine the scene, a little girl in a car full of corpses.
» On January 29, Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl from Gaza, found herself stranded in a vehicle among the remains of six members of her family, killed by Israeli tanks which opened fire, according to their relatives.
For more than three hours, surrounded by tanks, the little girl was at the mercy of volleys of gunfire, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) which remained in contact with her by telephone throughout this time.
To Franceinfo, the operator who was on the line described a terrible scene, from which the child ultimately did not survive, his body having been found on February 10.
From Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, Rana looks back on these long hours trying to reassure the terrified child, prisoner in this car filled with the remains of her loved ones, killed before her eyes.
The family was in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in southern Gaza City after trying to flee the fighting.
“Sometimes she would say to me
They are all sleeping.
And at other times,
They're all dead, there's blood everywhere, there's shooting
,” she remembers.
“She asked me to promise her that I would get her out of there”
" Come get me.
I'm so scared, please come,” the child implored on the phone, in excerpts of this call shared by the PRCS on the X network. “Even an adult could not cope with such a situation , put yourself in Hind’s place!
», says Rana.
How is this real life?
😞
How did a little girl survive a shooting that killed everyone else in the car?
How did she stay on the phone with PRCS teams for hours as we coordinated safe access for an ambulance to rescue her?
How can this story end this way?
💔
Hind, our paramedics,… pic.twitter.com/uwYnUqOw3F
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) February 12, 2024
The situation becomes even more tense when night begins to fall, the child confiding that he is “afraid of the dark”.
“Her voice was full of sadness and distress,” says the operator.
“She asked me to promise her that I would get her out of there,” she adds.
After an hour and a half of waiting, the crying child begged her to help him.
“She insisted:
You told me you would be there in an hour!
Where are you ?
»
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But the rescue operation is very delicate to implement, while it takes time to obtain access to Israeli forces.
Two paramedics end up taking the road, but they will never be able to save the child.
Human remains belonging to the two rescuers, Youssef Zaino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, were found 100 meters from the car where the young Hind was.
The PRCS accuses the Israeli forces of having “deliberately targeted the ambulance”, after having nevertheless authorized the rescuers to “reach the car and save the little girl”.
The vehicle, discovered gutted and charred, would have been bombed according to the organization.
The operator lost communication with the child shortly before 6 p.m.
Twelve days after the call, the bodies of the child and six members of his family were found by relatives near a gas station.
Their vehicle was riddled with bullets.
The drama, which has become an emblem of the tragic fate of thousands of Palestinian children crushed by the war, has had an international impact, with the United States even demanding an investigation from Israel, of which it is nevertheless the main ally on the world stage.
Since then, Rana has posted a photo of the girl behind his desk, surrounded by those of his two colleagues, who were the last PRCS rescuers to go to northern Gaza.
She did not emerge from this ordeal unscathed: “I have been working in rescue and first aid for thirteen years, I have never been so affected.”