1 of 2 | Protesters hold up an image of Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl who died under Israeli fire with six relatives in 2024, on a beach in Barcelona, Spain, on January 29. File Photo by Enric Fontcuberta/EPA

Aug. 19 (UPI) — The Israeli military announced Wednesday that it’s opening an investigation into the 2024 attacks on a Palestinian family and the ambulance that came to help them, killing nine people, including a 5-year-old girl.

The military confirmed it fired on a vehicle carrying seven members of the same family in Gaza City, the BBC reported. Five-year-old Hind Rajab initially survived the attack and was able to communicate with members of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which dispatched an ambulance.

The BBC reported the Israeli military then also opened fire on the ambulance, killing two paramedics. Hind’s body was later recovered with her deceased family members.

“Due to alleged failures in the coordination of the movement of the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance, it has been decided to initiate a criminal investigation of the incident by Military Police Criminal Investigation Division,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

Israeli officials initially said no troops were in the area of the shooting on the family. The BBC reported Hind and her family were trying to flee from invading Israeli soldiers in their neighborhood at the time of the attack.

Hind’s death was the subject of the dramatic film The Voice of Hind Rajab, which earned the Grand Jury Prize and other awards at the Venice International Film Festival in 2025. It was also nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards and Best Non-English Language Film at the Golden Globe Awards.

Israeli officials said it has reviewed 150 incidents involving troops since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023, and transferred them to prosecutors. The New York Times reported the investigations rarely led to convictions.

The military also forwarded a case for investigation involving the March 2025 fatal shooting of 14 Palestinian medics and rescue workers in Gaza. A U.N. employee who drove by after the shooting was also killed.

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his famed “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 1963. The speech galvanized the nation’s civil rights movements and led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. File photo by UPI | License Photo