Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of Hind Rajab and Palestinian paramedics

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said Wednesday (Aug 19) it would launch criminal investigations into two high-profile attacks on Palestinians during the war in Gaza, including the killings of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and her family and of 15 Palestinian paramedics.

The military said it would not launch criminal investigations into three other attacks that killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders.

It released the news in a statement that said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza and made decisions on five cases.

The statement did not mention other high-profile killings that the military has pledged to investigate throughout the war. It did not mention the Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed five journalists in August 2025, including Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other news organisations.

THE KILLINGS DREW INTERNATIONAL OUTCRY

Both the killing of Rajab in February 2024 and the killing of 15 Palestinian medics in May 2025 gained international attention.

Rajab was killed alongside her relatives while trying to flee Gaza City amid an Israeli offensive. Israeli troops opened fire on a vehicle carrying Hind and four of her cousins and her aunt and uncle. Hind’s cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamada, called the Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic centre, telling them that a tank was approaching and that her family had been killed.

Seconds later, more gunshots were heard, and Layan’s screaming stopped, according to the Red Crescent recording of the call.

Hind was the sole survivor in the car. The Red Crescent stayed in contact with her as they tried to get permission from the military to rescue her. Contact was lost. Hind, her five relatives and two medics were found dead 12 days later.

The 15 paramedics were killed when Israeli troops opened fire on their vehicles in the southern city of Rafah, then buried them in a mass grave. Troops shot at a first ambulance that was driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive, then fired on several other emergency vehicles that went out to look for the first one, according to phone footage and the sole survivor of the shootings.

Troops then bulldozed over the bodies along with their mangled vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. UN and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later to dig out the bodies.

The Israeli military initially said it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on nearby troops without headlights or emergency signals. But it backtracked from that account after the footage emerged, showing the Red Crescent and Civil Defense teams driving slowly with their emergency vehicle lights flashing and logos visible.

“We are not obligated to prove the truth because it is already proven to the whole world,” Eid Azizi, a Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson, told the Associated Press in a phone call. “We shouldn’t have reached this point if they respected and followed the international humanitarian law.”

THE WAR'S TOLL KEEPS GROWING

The war began on Oct 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and abducted 251 others. Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

That includes at least 1,273 people killed in Gaza since a fragile ceasefire took effect in October, according to the ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children constitute about half of the dead.