I referenced this story a few days ago in a thread that got no response. Perhaps now that it's in the mainstream media, it will, guess I'll find out...
**
The Washington Post
For three-and-a-half long hours on Jan. 29, the cellphone in 6-year old Hind Rajab’s 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.
From the operations room of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), 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.
The paramedics were driving to their deaths.
Twelve days later, when a Palestinian civil defense crew finally reached the area, they found Hind’s body in a car riddled with bullets, according to her uncle, Samir Hamada, who also arrived at the scene early that morning. The ambulance lay charred roughly 50 meters away (about 164 feet) from the car, its destruction consistent with the use of a round fired by Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said they conducted a preliminary investigation and that its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within the firing range” of the Hamada family car. Nor, they said, had they been required to provide the ambulance permission to enter the area. The State Department said it has raised the case repeatedly with the Israelis. “The Israelis told us there had, in fact, been IDF units in the area, but the IDF had no knowledge of or involvement in the type of strike described,” said spokesman Matt Miller.
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. The analysis is based on satellite imagery, contemporaneous dispatcher recordings, photos and videos of the aftermath, interviews with 13 dispatchers, family members and rescue workers, and more than a dozen military, satellite, munitions and audio experts who reviewed the evidence, as well as the IDF’s own statements.
PRCS as well as representatives from Euro-Med Monitor and the Civil Defense who visited the scene on Feb. 10 provided visuals to The Post, which it verified by independently confirming the location using satellite imagery, open-source maps and eyewitness interviews.
[snip]
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.
[The article has audio, not for the feint of heart]
After Qam’s call with Layan ended, the PRCS operations room called back immediately and Hind answered. Layan was dead and tanks were moving toward the car, she told another dispatcher, Rana Faqih. Hind described the presence of tanks at least five more times throughout the call.
[snip]
As the call with the paramedics drops at 6 p.m., a bang is audible on the call with Hind.
But the call with the girl continued, suggesting that cellphone service was not cut.
Red Crescent dispatchers had managed to patch Hind’s mother, Wesam, into the call in the hope that it might calm the child.
When the bang echoed out through the phone line, Wesam cried out: “Hanood, are you okay?”
A moment later, Hind replied.
“Yes,” she said.
By this point, everyone on the call with Hind — her family, the dispatchers — were praying they would not lose her too. She was falling silent for long periods. The team did what they could to keep her talking, but it was clear that the child’s thoughts had begun to loop. She just kept saying, “Come get me, quickly.”
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.”
They lost contact with her soon after 6 p.m., spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh recalled.
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.
Twelve days later
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. 30 — the morning after contact with the paramedics and Hind were lost.
When the IDF withdrew from the area nearly two weeks later on Feb. 10, Palestinian residents, including Samir, Hind’s uncle, and a civil defense crew found a haunting scene.
The door and pieces of the hood of the family car had been torn off. Samir described his brother’s body as “dangling” from the driver’s seat. The stench of decomposing corpses clung to the vehicle. He struggled to look at the bodies of the five children sandwiched on the back seat. Hind sat to the right of Layan, who was behind the driver. A page from what looks like a coloring book was crumpled where their feet would have rested. The bodies were so decomposed that it was not possible immediately see where the gunshots had hit them, Samir said. “We were only able to deduce their identities,” he recalled.
Holes in the Hamada family car were probably made by a 7.62 caliber machine gun, a weapon fixed to the Merkava, Namer and Puma, said Andrew Galer, head of the land platform and weapons team at defense intelligence firm Janes, who examined photos and video of the aftermath.
Armored vehicles, including some that roughly match the size of those seen in the Jan. 29 satellite imagery, were also present in the same location multiple times in the following 12 days.
A fragment of a U.S.-made 120mm round, which can be fired by the Merkava, was visible in video and images after rescue crews searched the scenes.
**
Full article:
Palestinian paramedics said Israel gave them safe passage to save a 6-year-old girl in Gaza. They were all killed. | MSN
**
The Washington Post
For three-and-a-half long hours on Jan. 29, the cellphone in 6-year old Hind Rajab’s 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.
From the operations room of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), 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.
The paramedics were driving to their deaths.
Twelve days later, when a Palestinian civil defense crew finally reached the area, they found Hind’s body in a car riddled with bullets, according to her uncle, Samir Hamada, who also arrived at the scene early that morning. The ambulance lay charred roughly 50 meters away (about 164 feet) from the car, its destruction consistent with the use of a round fired by Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said they conducted a preliminary investigation and that its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within the firing range” of the Hamada family car. Nor, they said, had they been required to provide the ambulance permission to enter the area. The State Department said it has raised the case repeatedly with the Israelis. “The Israelis told us there had, in fact, been IDF units in the area, but the IDF had no knowledge of or involvement in the type of strike described,” said spokesman Matt Miller.
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. The analysis is based on satellite imagery, contemporaneous dispatcher recordings, photos and videos of the aftermath, interviews with 13 dispatchers, family members and rescue workers, and more than a dozen military, satellite, munitions and audio experts who reviewed the evidence, as well as the IDF’s own statements.
PRCS as well as representatives from Euro-Med Monitor and the Civil Defense who visited the scene on Feb. 10 provided visuals to The Post, which it verified by independently confirming the location using satellite imagery, open-source maps and eyewitness interviews.
[snip]
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.
[The article has audio, not for the feint of heart]
After Qam’s call with Layan ended, the PRCS operations room called back immediately and Hind answered. Layan was dead and tanks were moving toward the car, she told another dispatcher, Rana Faqih. Hind described the presence of tanks at least five more times throughout the call.
[snip]
As the call with the paramedics drops at 6 p.m., a bang is audible on the call with Hind.
But the call with the girl continued, suggesting that cellphone service was not cut.
Red Crescent dispatchers had managed to patch Hind’s mother, Wesam, into the call in the hope that it might calm the child.
When the bang echoed out through the phone line, Wesam cried out: “Hanood, are you okay?”
A moment later, Hind replied.
“Yes,” she said.
By this point, everyone on the call with Hind — her family, the dispatchers — were praying they would not lose her too. She was falling silent for long periods. The team did what they could to keep her talking, but it was clear that the child’s thoughts had begun to loop. She just kept saying, “Come get me, quickly.”
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.”
They lost contact with her soon after 6 p.m., spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh recalled.
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.
Twelve days later
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. 30 — the morning after contact with the paramedics and Hind were lost.
When the IDF withdrew from the area nearly two weeks later on Feb. 10, Palestinian residents, including Samir, Hind’s uncle, and a civil defense crew found a haunting scene.
The door and pieces of the hood of the family car had been torn off. Samir described his brother’s body as “dangling” from the driver’s seat. The stench of decomposing corpses clung to the vehicle. He struggled to look at the bodies of the five children sandwiched on the back seat. Hind sat to the right of Layan, who was behind the driver. A page from what looks like a coloring book was crumpled where their feet would have rested. The bodies were so decomposed that it was not possible immediately see where the gunshots had hit them, Samir said. “We were only able to deduce their identities,” he recalled.
Holes in the Hamada family car were probably made by a 7.62 caliber machine gun, a weapon fixed to the Merkava, Namer and Puma, said Andrew Galer, head of the land platform and weapons team at defense intelligence firm Janes, who examined photos and video of the aftermath.
Armored vehicles, including some that roughly match the size of those seen in the Jan. 29 satellite imagery, were also present in the same location multiple times in the following 12 days.
A fragment of a U.S.-made 120mm round, which can be fired by the Merkava, was visible in video and images after rescue crews searched the scenes.
**
Full article:
Palestinian paramedics said Israel gave them safe passage to save a 6-year-old girl in Gaza. They were all killed. | MSN
