After several days of uncertainty about the whereabouts of the paramedics, Red Crescent and UN officials found the bodies of the 15 emergency and aid workers buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza, accusing Israeli forces of killing them. Another worker is still missing.
Munther Abed, a volunteer for the Palestinian Red Crescent, said he was responding to a call with two colleagues near Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip on March 23 when he was detained by the Israeli soldiers shortly before they opened fire on other emergency vehicles.
He said he had not been able to see exactly what happened when the soldiers opened fire. But his account corresponds with assertions by officials from the Palestinian Red Crescent and the United Nations that the emergency workers from the Red Cross, Red Crescent, U.N. and Palestinian Civil Emergency service were targeted by Israeli troops.
The military said the soldiers who opened fire had killed a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who were travelling in vehicles marked with the Palestinian Red Crescent signs.
The Palestinian Red Crescent describes Abed as "the lone survivor" of the incident, with the fate of the missing paramedic still unclear.
Abed said he and colleagues had received a call to go out to help wounded people at around dawn following an air strike in the Al-Hashasheen area in Rafah, close to the border with Egypt.
"We moved right away, it was me and two other colleagues. As soon as we arrived there, we came under fire and they detained us," he told Reuters by phone from his house in Khan Younis, referring to shooting by Israeli soldiers.
After he was detained, he said he lost sight of his two colleagues.
As he was standing near the soldiers, he said he saw other emergency vehicles approaching the Israeli soldiers' position.
"I could see the vehicle of the Civil Emergency. The soldiers began shooting at the vehicles, they fired heavily," he said. "It was dark and I couldn't see what happened to the people there, but they (the soldiers) fired heavily. They asked me to duck down and they were firing heavily. I felt as if the bullets were hitting me personally."
A video has emerged showing the final moments of more than a dozen Palestinian emergency workers shot dead by Israeli troops in Gaza last month, casting doubt on Israeli claims that soldiers opened fire on vehicles “advancing suspiciously.”
The video is filmed from the front of a vehicle and shows a convoy of clearly marked ambulances moving along a road at dawn, with headlights and flashing emergency lights on.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says the video was found on the phone of one of the 15 ambulance and relief team members killed by the Israeli military.
Their bodies were found in a mass grave more than a week after they were reported as missing. Eight of the 14 bodies recovered from the site in the southern Rafah area were identified as members of the PRCS, five as civil defense, and one as a UN agency employee, PRCS said in a statement.
The deaths sparked international condemnation, and the footage appears to contradict the assertion by the Israeli military that some vehicles were moving suspiciously without lights.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) asserted last week that “several uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals. IDF troops then opened fire at the suspected vehicles.”
After the video emerged, the IDF repeated that the incident was being investigated.
“All claims, including the documentation circulating about the incident, will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation,” it said Saturday.
The video shows the convoy stopping when it comes across another vehicle at the side of the road – which the PRCS says was an ambulance that had been sent earlier to help injured civilians. Two of the rescuers who get out of the vehicles are wearing uniforms. A fire truck and an ambulance at the scene are marked with the PRCS insignia.
Almost immediately there is intense gunfire, which can be heard hitting the convoy. The video ends, but the audio continues for five minutes.
The paramedic filming, identified by the PRCS as Rifaat Radwan, is heard repeatedly saying the “shahada,” which Muslims recite when facing death. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die.
At one point he says: “Forgive me mom, this is the path I chose – to help people – I swear I didn’t choose this path but to help people.”
The voices of others in the convoy can also be heard, as well as those of people shouting commands in Hebrew. It’s not clear who they are or what they are saying.
The IDF said on April 1 that “following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who took part in the October 7 massacre, along with 8 other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.”
The IDF did not offer proof of the identity of the alleged terrorists. CNN has obtained from the PRCS the names of 14 of those killed; none is identified as Mohammad Shubaki. The PRCS said the name of the fifteenth man killed – an UNRWA employee – was withheld out of respect for his family but was not the name given by the Israeli military.
The IDF added that it was “not surprising that terrorists are once again exploiting medical facilities and equipment for their activities.”
But the next day, the IDF said the incident was being investigated.
An Israeli military official told CNN last week that Israeli forces buried the bodies of the workers because they expected it would take time to coordinate their retrieval with the PRCS and the United Nations.
Satellite imagery from March 23, first published by Al Jazeera Arabic and analyzed by CNN, shows Israeli army vehicles surrounding a cluster of five ambulances from the PRCS and Civil Defense.
Another satellite image, also published by Al Jazeera and analyzed by CNN, dated March 25, shows an Israeli tank, an excavator, and other military vehicles at the same location. Where the ambulances once stood, remnants of vehicles protruded from disturbed ground.
