A Washington Post examination raises questions about Israel’s assertion that its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within the firing range” of six-year-old Hind Rajab.
hands was the closest thing she had to a lifeline. Alone in the back seat of a car outside a Gaza City gas station, she was drifting in and out of consciousness, surrounded by bodies, as she told emergency dispatchers that Israeli tanks were rumbling closer., roughly 50 miles away in the city of Ramallah, the team on duty had done their best to save the child. Paramedics were on their way, the dispatchers kept telling her: Hold on.
A Washington Post investigation found that Israeli armored vehicles were present in the area in the afternoon, and that gunfire audible as Hind and her cousin Layan begged for help, as well as extensive damage caused to the ambulance, are consistent with Israeli weapons.
Hind’s uncle, Bashar, and his wife packed her into the car along with her four cousins, Bashar’s brother Samir said. They planned to drive north, out of the evacuation zone and back toward the family home in northern Gaza City.Around 1 p.m., Hind’s cousin, 15-year-old Layan, called Samir. She told him they were surrounded and the Israeli army had opened fire on their car.
More than a dozen other Israeli armored vehicles are visible within a quarter-mile of the Hamada family car, the image shows. Fathi Abu Warda — a liaison between the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry in Ramallah and COGAT, an arm of the Israeli Defense Ministry that oversees the Palestinian territories — said that permission for an ambulance to proceed to Hind arrived in the form of a route map from COGAT. Abu Warda sent the map to the PRCS dispatch team on WhatsApp at 5:40 p.m., according to messages reviewed by The Post.
Al-Shifa, which Israel has repeatedly targeted, alleging that Hamas fighters are regrouping there, is roughly three-quarters of a mile from where the Hamada family car stopped. If the phone ran out of battery, Faqih told her, she was to stay in the car, where they could still find her. “If night comes and we don’t come, close your eyes so that you don’t see the tanks.”No one spoke much after that. The room felt muffled with shock. They tried to call Hind again and again, Farsakh said, but no one answered.The ambulance had come to a stop where a dark spot resembling a scorch mark first appeared in satellite imagery taken at 10:21 a.m. on Jan.
Andrew Galer, head of the land platform and weapons team at defense intelligence firm Janes, who examined photos and video of the aftermath. The Post was not able to determine exactly where just north of the ambulance the fragment was originally found or if it was directly connected to the ambulance strike given the time elapsed and the ongoing fighting.
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