While the Israeli forces advanced in the southern city of Gaza of Rafah before the dawn of the last Sunday, an ambulance crew aimed to evacuate the civilians wounded by the Israeli bombings. But the ambulance was hit along the road and his crew hurt.
Several other ambulances and a fire truck went to the scene, according to Palestine Red Crescent Society, as they did a United Nations vehicle, said the United Nations. Seventeen people have been sent in total.
Then they all remained silent.
It took five days for the United Nations and the red crescent to negotiate with the Israeli military for a safe passage to look for the missing people. After receiving the authorization, the United Nations officials said, the recovery team found 15 deaths during the weekend, most of their bodies downloaded in a mass tomb.
On Monday, the United Nations said that Israel had killed them – a rare accusation from the organization, which is typically cautious in assigning a clear fault.
“They were killed by the Israeli forces while trying to save lives,” said the United Nations Humanitarian Chief, Tom Fletcher, on X. “We ask for answers and justice”.
The Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations said that all those killed were humanitarian workers who should never have been attacked. The red crescent defined the killings a war crime and requested responsibility.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, told X Monday that nine of those killed were Palestinian militants. He said that the Israeli forces “did not randomly attacked” an ambulance, but that several vehicles “were identified by advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signs towards Israeli troops, pushing them to shoot.
United Nations officials said the vehicles were clearly marked as rescue vehicles.
Colonel Shoshani said that during the attack, the Israeli forces killed a military agent of Hamas, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who participated in the assault of 7 October 2023 in Israel who triggered the war in Gaza.
He said that the Israeli forces had also killed eight more agents from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group. He accused the militants of “Once again exploit medical structures and equipment for their activities”.
He did not say directly if the militants were in emergency vehicles or turned to the identities of the other six people killed.
After the vehicles were shot, the United Nations officials said, the ambulances, a fire truck and the United Nations vehicle were therefore demolished and crushed by the Israeli forces.
The red crescent said that a doctor was still missing. The lone survivor, a member of the Crescent Red Crescent, was detained, beaten and released by Israeli forces the same day, according to the help group. He told his colleagues that the Israeli forces had killed both other crew members in his ambulance, said the red crescent and the United Nations officials.
Of the 17 people involved, 10 were the workers of the Crescent Red, six were rescuers of the civil defense of Gaza and one was a United Nations worker, said the United Nations officials.
The best humanitarian official of the United Nations in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, joined the recovery team and published photos on X who show the crumpled vehicles – agitated metal peels that dirty from the sand. The great “n” navy blue on the United Nations vehicle was still visible on it.
“One by one, they were struck, they were affected. Their bodies were collected and buried in this mass tomb,” he said in a video message shared by the United Nations.
On Friday, the United Nations team that went in search of the missing people has witnessed new scenes of chaos and violence in Rafah, including “hundreds of civilians on the run under the shots”, said Whittall on X. A woman was hit in the back of the head, he said.
He published a video that shows what he said came later: two men walked towards the street, apparently to recover the woman’s body. So even one of them was hit. Mr. Whittall did not say who shot the blows.
Saturday, the United Nations convoy found the crumpled vehicles. Hours of excavation produced a body, a worker of the civil defense buried under his fire, said Mr. Whittall. They returned to the remaining bodies on Sunday.
Mr. Whittall narrated the search for bodies in the video message.
“We are digging them in their uniforms, with their gloves,” he said. “They were here to save human lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass tomb.”
The tomb, he said, was marked by the emergency light of one of the destroyed ambulances.
Colonel Shoshani, Israeli military spokesman, said that the vehicles, unlike others along the same route at the beginning of that day, had not received permission from the Israeli forces that they were there.
Nebal Farsakh, a spokesman for the Crescent Red Crescent Society, said that when ambulances leave around 3:30 on March 23, the Israeli forces had not yet closed the area as a “red zone”, where ambulances must free their movements with Israel.
Israel did not immediately deal with the accusations of burying people in mass municipalities or crushing their vehicles.
Overall, the Crescent Red said, 27 of its doctors have been killed since the beginning of the war.
A ceased the fire stopped to fight in Gaza from January to March 18, when Israel broke him.
The cartilage of Sheikh Ahmad AND Aaron Boxerman Reports contributed by Jerusalem.