Gaza rescuers go missing during a mission to rescue a girl trapped in a car

The post from the Palestinian Red Crescent was a chilling plea, hoping to learn the fate of three people who had not been heard from for five days.

'Where is Hind? Where are Ahmed and Yousef? We need to know,” it said.

Two of the group's rescuers were dispatched Monday to find 6-year-old Hind Rajab, who was believed to be trapped in a vehicle in northern Gaza with several dead relatives.

The Red Crescent said one of its staff spoke extensively with Hind by telephone on Monday and that she believed all six of her family members who were in the vehicle with her had been killed by Israeli fire that same day.

The Israeli military said it was not aware of the incident.

The Red Crescent said in a statement on Saturday evening: “118 hours have passed and the fate of the PRCS ambulance team, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al Madhoun, who went to rescue the 6-year-old girl Hind remains unknown. ”

It was the latest in a series of desperate messages the aid agency has posted daily since the rescuers went missing, counting the hours since their disappearance in an attempt to draw attention to the fate of all three.

The Red Crescent said response coordinator Rana al-Faqeh spoke with Hind for more than three hours on Monday afternoon in an attempt to calm the frightened child.

“Come for me,” Hind begged, according to an audio signal intake of the conversation released on social media by the Red Crescent on Tuesday. “I'm scared. Please come. Please call someone to come get me.” The recording could not be independently verified.

As the sun set, Hind told Ms al-Faqeh that she was afraid of the dark. Ms al-Faqeh told reporters she tried to reassure her, saying they were trying to send people to rescue her.

After Ms al-Faqeh spoke to Hind, the Red Crescent sent the two rescuers in an ambulance to her vehicle in Gaza City, which was near a petrol station. Rescuers confirmed they arrived around 6pm on Monday.

They then lost contact and have not been heard from since.

The Red Crescent said it had coordinated the ambulance's movements with the Israeli army, which invaded Gaza following the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls the area. Similar coordination is being done by other aid organizations operating in Gaza, including UN agencies.

The Red Crescent has called on the international community to put pressure on the Israeli army to take accountability for what happened.

The group said it first heard of Hind's plight through her relatives elsewhere in Gaza City. They gave the organization a telephone number of someone in the car.

In a interview While Al Jazeera Arabic was broadcast on Wednesday, Hind's mother said she had spoken on Monday to her daughter and an older cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamadeh, who was in the car with her.

The Red Crescent; Hind's mother, who was not mentioned in the interview; and an uncle, Issam Hamadeh, who was also interviewed by Al Jazeera all said that Layan's parents and her three siblings had been murdered.

The Red Crescent said it also spoke briefly with Layan on Monday. When she answered the phone, according to another audio, she was panicking intake posted by the organization on social media on Tuesday.

'They're shooting at us. The tank is next to us,” Layan said on the phone intake, which could not be independently verified. Then a barrage of shooting sounds. She shouts before the line goes silent.

The Red Crescent said they believed Layan had also been killed. Hind's mother said in the Al Jazeera interview that her daughter also told her that Layan was dead.

Hind's mother told Al Jazeera that she tried to calm her daughter down by reciting verses from the Quran and praying. But she had to hang up so the Red Crescent could call Hind to find out where she was.

Her mother said one of the last things Hind said to her was, “Don't leave me, Mom. I'm hungry. I'm hurt.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad reporting contributed.