Israeli military orders criminal investigation into killing of Hind Rajab, 5, and 15 emergency aid workers in Gaza
Hind Rajab was one of seven family members travelling in a vehicle that came under fire from the Israeli army in Gaza City in January 2024.
The Israeli military has ordered a criminal investigation into the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab and 15 emergency aid workers after their deaths in Gaza drew international condemnation.
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The killing of the young Palestinian girl sparked widespread outrage after a desperate recording of her talking to paramedics trying to save her life was broadcast to the world.
Hind Rajab was one of seven family members travelling in a vehicle that came under fire from the Israeli army in Gaza City in January 2024.
She was pinned down in that car for hours begging Palestinian medics by mobile phone to send help, while her aunt, uncle and three cousins already lay dead.
When an ambulance arrived, contact with the girl and the rescuers themselves was lost. Twelve days later, the bodies of the girl, her relatives and two ambulance workers were recovered from thearea.
A film about Hind Rajab's death won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.
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The Israeli military said it completed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza and made decisions on five cases.
They included an examination of the killings of seven aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity in April 2024.
On that incident, the military said there was "no reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct that would justify the opening of a criminal investigation."
"For more than a thousand days, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has been conducting intensive combat across numerous fronts, carrying out a wide range of military missions in an exceptionally complex operational reality," the Israeli military said.
It added: "As part of the IDF’s obligations under international law and Israeli domestic law, the IDF examines exceptional incidents that occurred during combat."
Israeli rights groups say that criminal misconduct investigations into Israeli troops over the killing of Palestinians rarely lead to convictions.
"Nearly zero indictments are served relative to the number of complaints of soldiers and commanders who commit offenses. In rare cases when commanders or soldiers are convicted, they receive ridiculously lenient sentences compared with the severity of the offence," a spokesperson for the Israeli rightsorganization Yesh Din said.
In March 2025, 15 emergency and aid workers from the Red Crescent, Palestinian Civil Defense and the United Nations were recovered from a grave in the sand in the south of the Gaza Strip, U.N. officials said at the time.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said in a post on X that the bodies were buried near "wrecked & well-marked vehicles," adding: "They were killed by Israeli forces while trying to savelives. We demand answers & justice."
Israeli forces say they have never deliberately targeted civilians in the Gaza war, repeating the claim that Hamas uses civilians as human shields.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment directly on the deaths of the Red Crescent workers at the time. In a later statement it said that it had facilitated the evacuation of the bodies from the area, which it described as an active combat zone.
It did not specifically respond to questions about why the bodies were retrieved from beneath the sand or why the vehicles were found crushed.