Israeli military orders criminal investigations into killings of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and 15 others in Gaza
Israel Orders Criminal Probes Into Two Gaza Killings, Including That of a Five-Year-Old Girl
Bizeconanalysis.com – The Israel Defense Forces announced Wednesday that it will launch formal criminal investigations into two separate incidents in which its soldiers killed Palestinians in Gaza — one involving a five-year-old girl whose final hours on a phone call to an emergency dispatcher became one of the most widely heard recordings of the war, and another involving fifteen rescue workers and civilians gunned down in March 2025. Both probes will be carried out by the Israeli military police.
The announcement marked a significant reversal in the IDF’s public account of the first incident. For months after the January 2024 shooting, the military maintained that no Israeli forces were present in the area where the vehicle was struck. On Wednesday, that position was abandoned entirely.
The Rajab Case: A Child’s Final Hours
Hind Rajab, five years old, was riding in a car with six family members when the vehicle came under Israeli fire in Gaza City. Of the seven occupants, only Hind and her fifteen-year-old cousin Layan survived the initial barrage. What followed was captured in audio that would later circulate globally: Layan’s panicked description of the scene, punctuated by gunfire and screaming, before her call to the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency line dropped.
Hind then answered a return call. Over the course of hours, the little girl spoke to an operator, describing her surroundings in fragments. At one point she said, in Arabic:
“The tank is next to me. I’m so scared. Please come.”
As darkness settled over Gaza City, Hind told the dispatcher she was afraid of the dark. The conversation was severed abruptly when gunfire erupted again. For twelve days, no one reached her. When her body was finally recovered, it was found alongside the remains of two paramedics who had been dispatched to rescue her after the IDF stated it would grant the ambulance safe passage. Forces at the scene opened fire, killing everyone inside, the military confirmed in its Wednesday statement.
The episode was later adapted into the award-winning 2025 docudrama The Voice of Hind Rajab, which brought the audio recordings to a wider audience and intensified calls for accountability.
What the IDF Said
In its statement, the military framed the investigation around a coordination failure rather than a deliberate targeting decision:
“Following review of the findings and 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.”
The phrasing — “alleged failures” — signals that the military is treating the matter as a breakdown in communication between units rather than an intentional act of violence against a civilian vehicle.
The Tel al-Sultan Mass Killing
The second investigation concerns the March 2025 deaths of fifteen Gazans, including Palestinian medics and a United Nations staffer, in the Tel al-Sultan area. The IDF’s initial explanation was that its forces opened fire because the approaching vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals. That account was effectively retracted after cellphone footage surfaced showing the opposite: Red Crescent and Gazan Civil Defense teams driving slowly, emergency lights flashing, organizational logos clearly visible, pulling up beside an ambulance that had already come under fire.
In the video, three medics step out of their vehicles and walk toward the stricken ambulance. Their own vehicles are then subjected to a sustained barrage of gunfire lasting more than five minutes, interrupted only by brief pauses. The person filming can be heard praying, his voice shaking:
“Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose, mother, to help people.”
The footage also shows Israeli troops subsequently bulldozing over the bodies and the wreckage of the vehicles, burying them in what appears to be a mass grave. The IDF stated Wednesday that Hamas operatives were among those killed and that its forces had “decided to crush the vehicles and to cover the bodies with metal mesh.” United Nations and rescue personnel were unable to reach the site until a week later, when they excavated the remains.
After the video went public, the IDF characterized the deaths as the result of an “operational misunderstanding” among its own units. It added that a separate shooting incident fifteen minutes later — in which Israeli soldiers fired at a Palestinian U.N. vehicle — constituted a breach of standing orders.
A Pattern of Helplessness
Workers at the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency call center in Ramallah, roughly fifty miles from Gaza City, handled the Rajab calls and countless others. Spokesperson Nebal Farsakh described the daily reality of the operation:
“The story of Hind is not the only story. It’s absolutely dozens of calls we’re getting since the beginning of the war in Gaza, where we feel helpless.”
Survivors of the Tel al-Sultan attack carry their own wounds. Asaad al-Nasasra, one of two medics who lived through the mass killing, told The Guardian last June that he remains haunted by the sound of gunfire, the sight of his wounded colleagues, and what he witnessed as they were killed.
Accountability in Question
Military criminal investigations in Israel have historically produced few convictions. An August 2025 study by Action on Armed Violence examined fifty-two publicly acknowledged Israeli military killings and found that eighty-eight percent resulted in no punishment or formal charge. Whether these two new probes will follow that pattern, or whether the extraordinary public visibility of the Rajab audio and the Tel al-Sultan video will alter the outcome, remains to be seen. For now, the families of Hind Rajab and the fifteen killed in Tel al-Sultan await whatever findings the military police produce.
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