Israeli military orders criminal investigations into killings of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and 15 others in Gaza

The Israeli military has ordered a criminal investigation into the killing by its forces of 5-year-old Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl whose death in Gaza sparked international outrage after a recording of her final, heart-wrenching moments speaking to paramedics was heard around the world. 

In a statement Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged for the first time that troops opened fire on the vehicle carrying Rajab’s family in January 2024, having previously said no forces were in the area at the time.

“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 IDF said.

The military said it was also ordering a criminal investigation into the March 2025 killing of 15 Gazans, including rescue workers.

The investigations will be conducted by Israeli military police. 

Rajab, whose story was made into the award-winning 2025 docudrama “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” was in a car with six family members when it came under Israeli fire in Gaza City.

Only Rajab and her cousin Layan survived the initial attack. Audio from her cousin’s phone call to the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service captured 15-year-old Layan describing the chaotic scene around her, amid the sound of gunfire and screaming, before  the call dropped.

Rajab answered a return call, which lasted hours, telling the emergency operator at one point: “The tank is next to me,” in Arabic. “I’m so scared. Please come.”

Rajab’s desperate pleas for rescue as night fell, telling the operator she was afraid of the dark, were cut off as gunfire again rang out and the call abruptly ended.

Twelve days later, her body was recovered, along with those of two paramedics who had been sent to rescue her. The IDF said it would grant the ambulance safe passage, before forces at the scene opened fire, killing those inside, according to the military’s statement on Wednesday.

A few weeks after the incident, CBS’ 60 Minutes spoke with Palestinian Red Crescent workers at the emergency call center in Ramallah, 50 miles away, which handled the calls with Rajab and her cousin.

“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,” spokesperson Nebal Farsakh said.

Haunted “by the sound of gunfire”

As well as the Rajab case, the IDF also said it was opening a criminal probe into the killing of Palestinian medics, including a U.N. staffer, in Tel al-Sultan, Gaza, in March 2025. 

The IDF initially said its forces opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals, but walked back that account after cellphone video surfaced of the attack, showing Red Crescent and Gazan Civil Defense teams driving slowly with their emergency lights flashing and logos visible as they pulled up to help an ambulance that had come under fire earlier. 

In the clip, they do not appear to be acting in a threatening manner as three medics emerge and head toward the stricken ambulance. Their vehicles then come under a barrage of gunfire, which goes on for more than five minutes with brief pauses. 

The person holding the phone who recorded the incident can be heard praying.

“Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose, mother, to help people,” the person recording cries, his voice trembling.

Video showed the Israeli troops then bulldozing over the bodies, along with their mangled vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. The IDF said Wednesday that there were Hamas operatives among those killed, and that the forces had “decided to crush the vehicles and to cover the bodies with metal mesh.”

U.N. and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later to dig out the bodies.

After the video emerged, the IDF said the deaths were due to an “operational misunderstanding” among Israeli forces, and that a separate incident 15 minutes later, when Israeli soldiers shot at a Palestinian U.N. vehicle, was a breach of orders.

The Palestinian Red Crescent told The Guardian last June that Asaad al-Nasasra, one of the two medics who survived the mass killing, was haunted “by the sound of gunfire, the sight of his wounded colleagues, and their brutal killings.” 

IDF investigations rarely lead to punishment or convictions. An investigation by Action on Armed Violence in August 2025 found that 88% of 52 publicly acknowledged Israeli military investigations into alleged war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank stalled or closed without findings, with only one resulting in a prison sentence against the accused.

Wednesday’s IDF statement said there was no criminal misconduct involved in the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen employees in April 2024, or the IDF’s killing of two Doctors Without Borders (MSF) employees in Gaza’s Khan Younis in February 2024, or two further deaths of MSF employees in Gaza City in November 2023, which the IDF said could have been caused by “bullet ricochet or bullet splash” from “warning fire.”  

Israel’s military actions have killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people, saw hundreds more taken hostage, and sparked the war in Gaza.