Hind Rajab: Were Israeli troops around where the six-year-old was killed?
26 Feb 2024 | Al Jazeera
▻https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/26/hind-rajab-were-israeli-troops-in-the-area-where-6-year-old-was-killed
An Al Jazeera investigation has shown three Israeli tanks around the car where a six-year-old girl was killed after hours of pleading for help.
However, Israel’s army denied this on Saturday, saying its troops were not in the area on January 29, the day Hind Rajab and her family were killed.
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What happened to the ambulance?
Medics Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun arrived at the scene around 6pm on January 29, after hours of the PRCS trying to get permission from the Israeli army.
“I’m nearly there,” Zeino told his colleagues as the ambulance edged closer to Hind. But the two rescue workers never got to her.“We heard gunfire, we couldn’t imagine [they] would fire at them,” Rana Faqih, the PRCS official who held the line with Hind, told Al Jazeera. After the gunfire, there was complete silence.
It was only 12 days later on February 10 that the remains of the two men were found, following the Israeli military’s withdrawal. The ambulance was destroyed and appeared to have been run over by a tank, according to Sanad’s analysis.
What next?
The United States, Israel’s number-one ally, has called for probes into the killing of Hind, her family, and the medics.
US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters: “We have asked the Israeli authorities to investigate this incident on an urgent basis.”
After the initial finding into Hind’s case was released on Saturday, Israeli officials told local reporters the investigation has been transferred to the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism for further analysis.
Similar Israeli investigations have not been straightforward. Authorities denied the May 2022 killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh for several months before admitting that Israeli gunfire had killed the veteran journalist, claiming it was “not intentional”.