In Gaza, the strange disappearance of a six-year-old girl – Liberation

Providing information from Gaza is extremely difficult. No journalist can enter, with the exception of brief incursions into Israeli military units. Those who were there before October 7 continue to provide information on the situation. Among them, Mai Yagi of Agence France-Presse, whose report we are publishing today.

In the throes of war on the Gaza Strip, the mysterious fate of 6-year-old Hind Rajab clings to his grandfather. Baha Hamada hangs his head nervously. He says he hasn’t slept a wink since his granddaughter disappeared on January 29, 2024.

“We want to know what happened to him, whatever he was. I can’t imagine him among the bodies without food and drink and in the extreme cold. Dogs and cats eat corpses.said the 58-year-old, who is now displaced in Rafah in the far south of the Gaza Strip. “She was scared, she was panicked and she suffered injuries to her back, arms and legs.”He adds without stopping to cry.

Gaza City has been virtually cut off from the rest of the region for weeks. The United Nations condemns the impossibility of delivering humanitarian aid to the remaining millions of people in the north of the Palestinian Territory, which have been heavily affected by the outbreak of war. The fighting is now going on in the south. In Gaza City, bodies were left in the streets, others were trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

In the car were little Hind as well as Bashar, Hamada’s brother, her sister-in-law and other children. They were trying to escape from Israeli forces in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, but came face-to-face with tanks, which apparently opened fire.

The sound of the door

“I called my brother and his daughter Lay answered. She said her parents and three brothers were killed and she is alive with Hind. We tried to calm her down saying we will call an ambulance.”, calls AFP a grandfather. Hind then called his mother on the phone. The girl said she saw the ambulance coming. “His mother heard the car door open, then lost contact.”

Since then, nothing. 15-year-old Layan was also killed along with the other occupants of the car. But what about the little girl? The Israeli army did not respond to AFP’s questions about the shooting at the car full of civilians. Neither on the fate of the little girl and those who came to find her. The Palestinian Red Crescent (IFRC) confirmed that a switchboard operator was on Lion and heard gunfire.

The two men who went to look for the little girl, Youssef Zeno and Ahmed al-Madhun, who were sent to the scene with an ambulance, were never seen again. “We call on the international community to intervene urgently to put pressure on the business authorities (Israel, editor’s note) to reveal the fate reserved for Little Hind and the IFRC team”He made the announcement on Saturday, February 3.

“The tanks were approaching”

The war erupted on October 7, 2023, following an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza, which left more than 1,160 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an official Israeli-sourced AFP count. In response, Israel launched a military offensive that killed more than 27,500 people in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians, according to Hamas’ health ministry.

Five children were killed in this car. Hamada explains that his three-year-old grandson and his parents are still alive somewhere in Gaza City. But the image of the little girl haunts him. “Hind is my first granddaughter, she is a part of me”, whispered Grandpa. In the photo she shows to AFP, the little girl is all smiles, carefully combed, wearing colorful clothes in a sparkling home. Time that seems unreal today. Unable to hold back her tears, Hamada recalls her last words to him. “She told me she was scared and hungry, and asked me to come and get her. She told me the tanks were approaching.