Gaza (QNN)- The Israeli military has admitted for the first time it opened fire on a vehicle carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab and her family in Gaza City two-and-a-half years ago after repeatedly denying the attack which killed the Palestinian girl and several members of her family during the genocide.
On Wednesday, the military said it would open a criminal investigation into the killing of nine people on 29 January 2024, including Hind.
On that date, the girl initially survived an Israeli attack on a vehicle which killed several members of her family. Following the Israeli shelling, Hind answered a phone call from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), during which she told medics to come and save her.
After coordination with the Israeli army, an ambulance was sent to rescue her. That ambulance was shelled by Israeli forces, killing two paramedics. Twelve days after the attack, the bodies of Hind, six members of her family and the two paramedics were found.
PRCS said that Israeli forces "deliberately targeted the ambulance upon its arrival at the scene" despite prior coordination to facilitate the rescue mission.
Her mother, Wissam Rajab, said at the time that the family was separated when they tried to flee the area, which was under intense Israeli bombardment. Due to poor weather, Wissam had put her daughter in the vehicle along with her uncle, his wife and their children, while the rest of the family fled on foot.
After hearing gunfire in the area, the family called the Red Crescent to tell them the car was getting shot at.
Initially, Wissam thought everyone in the car was killed until she got a call from Layan Hamadeh, her 15-year-old cousin, saying: "Hind and I are wounded, and all my family is dead, I don't want to die. Please call an ambulance to save us. I'm scared. The tanks are 500 metres away from me."
The line went dead, and Wissam thought they had both been killed. But when she called again, Hind answered and said: "I'm alive, but Layan was martyred. Mum, I'm afraid, they are all dead. Come and get me."
The PRCS dispatched the two paramedics to rescue Hind. The medics said they were 15 minutes away and that they were looking for her, but then the line cut off and the crew lost contact.
PRCS released an audio recording of the last phone call with Hind, during which her final pleas can be heard amid the rattle of gunfire.
"I'm scared of the dark, come get me," she said.
According to Rajab, Hind said: "Don't leave me, I'm cold, hungry, and afraid."
"Due to alleged failures in the coordination of the movement of the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance, it has been decided to initiate a criminal investigation of the incident by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division," the Israeli military said on Wednesday.
It said that the investigation would be led by Israel's Military Police Criminal Investigation Division - the main body that investigates accusations of wrongdoing by the military.
At the time of the killings, Israel’s military said it was not in the Tal al-Hawa area of Gaza City where the killings took place.
However, multiple media reports identified Israeli tanks in the area.
At the time that the car and ambulance were found, the Israeli military had stated that it "conducted raids on terror targets" in areas including Tel al-Hawa. It later deleted that press release from its website.
A 2024 Al Jazeera investigation into the killing of Rajab and her family revealed that an Israeli tank was likely 13 to 23 metres (43 to 75ft) away and would have clearly seen the civilians inside the car.
A docu-drama on the killing of Hind Rajab was nominated at the 2026 Oscars for Best International Feature Film.
The Israeli military also announced it was opening a criminal investigation into the killing of 15 aid workers in Tal al-Sultan, in southern Gaza, in March 2025.
However, in three other cases, the military said there was "no reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct". That included the Israeli killing of two Doctors Without Borders (MSF) employees in November 2023, the killing of two other MSF workers in February 2024, and the killing of seven World Central Kitchen employees in April 2024.
The announcement followed reviews of 150 attacks of troop conduct during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it said.
Decades of Israeli crimes against Palestinians have not delivered any serious form of justice, according to the president of the Hind Rajab Foundation, Dyab Abou JahJah, who does not believe this case will change that.
The foundation said it had no confidence in Israel’s reported decision to launch a criminal probe into Rajab’s killing.
“We do not trust the Israeli justice system, not out of an ideological position, but because of the track record,” Abou JahJah told Al Jazeera. “And in this particular case, the Israeli justice system as a whole has always been complicit in Israeli crimes.”
Rajab’s grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, told The Associated Press news agency by phone that the Israeli investigation is not enough, and called for an international probe into the killing of her granddaughter and all of the thousands of children killed in Gaza during the war.
“An international investigation is required to uncover the truth and hold all those responsible accountable,” she said. “We call for justice, not only for Hind, but for all Gaza children.”
Multiple human rights experts, scholars, and a UN inquiry have concluded that Israel’s assault on Gaza amounts to genocide, killing more than 37,000 Palestinians since October 2023 and devastating over 90 percent of the enclave.
