Hind Rajab was petrified.
She was trapped in a car with her aunt, uncle and four cousins. All of them were dead. An Israeli tank loomed outside the car. Night was falling. For three hours she begged on the phone, her voice small and often trembling, for someone to come get her.
Hind is 6 years old.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society sent an ambulance team to rescue Hind several hours after the girls first made contact. Because it was an active combat area, the Palestinian emergency service said, it had to request and eventually received permission from Israeli authorities to go where the family’s vehicle had been trapped by fighting.
In response to requests for comment, the Israel Defense Forces told NBC News on Thursday it was “unfamiliar with the incident described,” which has received widespread coverage in both local and foreign press.
The PRCS said its paramedics Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al Madhoun had arrived in the area but lost contact by 7 p.m. local time on Monday. They are both missing, too, according the PRCS.
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