Gaza: an army admits firing on the car of a five-year-old child

An army has admitted, for the first time, that its soldiers opened fire on a car carrying a five-year-old girl and her family in Gaza. The military command ordered on Wednesday a criminal investigation into the death of the child, Hind Rajab, and a second into the deaths of fifteen rescuers.

On 29 January 2024, the little girl made a distress call to the Red Crescent that lasted for hours. Her body was later recovered from a bullet-riddled vehicle, together with six relatives and two paramedics. The command had first denied that its troops were present at the scene; its own review now admits that the soldiers « fired on a vehicle that was approaching them, travelling contrary to the prior instruction » given to residents.

The inquiry, entrusted to the criminal investigation division of the military police, is opened « on account of alleged failures in the coordination » of the ambulance sent to rescue her. The same statement opens a second investigation into fifteen paramedics whose ambulances were fired on at Rafah; the command had already admitted « professional failings » and « a chain of errors », while denying any « ethical deviation ». Its own account contradicts itself: it claims that five passengers were killed and that Hind and her cousin Layan survived, when the child and the two paramedics were afterward found dead.

The fifth commandment is without qualification: Non occides, thou shalt not kill. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that while the soldier who fights justly and the magistrate who punishes are not murderers, the blood of the innocent cries out for vengeance to Heaven, as Abel's rose from the earth. An investigation is an act of human justice, and one must wish it entire; but it is not yet reparation, and no tribunal, by deferring it more than a year, stills that cry. The blood that is shed remains until an account is rendered for every innocent.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment; Exodus 20:13 and Genesis 4:10, according to the Vulgate; the four sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance.