Missing 6-Year-Old Who Pleaded for Help in Gaza Is Found Dead With Rescue Teams

The 6-year-old Palestinian girl who pleaded for help with emergency dispatchers while trapped in a car with dead relatives was found dead in the Tal Al-Hawa area of Gaza City, more than a week after she made her distressing final call.

Hind Rajab, who was missing for days after the Palestine Red Crescent (PCRS) sent a rescue team to try and find her, was discovered on Saturday along with the two rescue crew members near the charred shell of their ambulance, which was nearly beyond recognition.

The aid group posted photos and video of the destroyed ambulance at the scene, alleging that Israel “deliberately targeted” the rescue crew “despite prior coordination to allow the ambulance to reach the location to rescue the child.” The PCRS said that the rescuers, Yusuf Al-Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, were “just meters away from the child Hind” when they were struck down by Israeli fire.

“Hind tragically lost her life alone after pleading with our teams for hours in a terrified and desperate voice, ‘Come take me,’” the PRCS said on Saturday.

Hind was believed to be trapped in a vehicle with five other family members on Jan. 29, caught in a shootout with Israeli soldiers. In the heartbreaking audio recording of a distress phone call, she and a 15-year-old cousin can be heard begging for help from the PCRS before being cut off by the sound of gunfire and screams. Hind, the sole survivor of the attack, dialed the PCRS again after her cousin was gunned down and spoke with a dispatcher for hours pleading for rescue.

“I’m so scared, please come. Please call someone to come and take me,” she can be heard telling the dispatcher in another recording, with the sound of gunfire in the background.

Listen: Missing Gaza Girl Trapped in Car Shootout Begs for Help

The PCRS sent Al-Zeino and Al-Madhoun in an emergency vehicle to rescue Hind later that day. But they lost contact with the two responders shortly after they were dispatched, around 6 p.m. on Jan. 29.

“We never expected this end,” the PCRS said of the tragedy. “This bombing of humanitarian workers must be condemned. Our thoughts are with Hind’s family, as well as the families of Yousef and Ahmed.”

The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 28,000, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. UNICEF, the United Nations’ emergency organization for children, in December declared the Gaza Strip “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.”

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