Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian medics and buried them in a mass
grave, UN says
[April 01, 2025]
By WAFAA SHURAFA, LEE KEATH and FATMA KHALED
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinians held funerals Monday for
15 medics and emergency responders killed by Israeli troops in southern
Gaza, after their bodies and mangled ambulances were found buried in an
impromptu mass grave, apparently plowed over by Israeli military
bulldozers.
The Palestinian Red Crescent says the slain workers and their vehicles
were clearly marked as medical and humanitarian personnel and accused
Israeli troops of killing them “in cold blood.” The Israeli military
says its troops opened fire on vehicles that approached them
“suspiciously” without identification.
The dead included eight Red Crescent workers, six members of Gaza’s
Civil Defense emergency unit and a staffer from UNRWA, the U.N.’s agency
for Palestinians. The International Red Cross/Red Crescent said it was
the deadliest attack on its personnel in eight years.
Since the war in Gaza began 18 months ago, Israel has killed more than
100 Civil Defense workers and more than 1,000 health workers, according
to the U.N.
Here is what we know about what happened.
Missing for days
The emergency teams had been missing since March 23, when they went at
around noon to retrieve casualties after Israeli forces launched an
offensive into the Tel al-Sultan district of the southern city of Rafah.
The military had called for an evacuation of the area earlier that day,
saying Hamas militants were operating there. Alerts by the Civil Defense
at the time said displaced Palestinians sheltering in the area had been
hit and a team that went to rescue them was “surrounded by Israeli
troops.”
“The available information indicates that the first team was killed by
Israeli forces on 23 March,” the U.N. said in a statement Sunday night.
Further emergency teams that went to rescue the first team were “struck
one after another over several hours,” it said. All the teams went out
during daylight hours, according to the Civil Defense.
The Israeli military said Sunday that on March 23, troops opened fire on
vehicles that were “advancing suspiciously” toward them without
emergency signals.
It said “an initial assessment” determined that the troops killed a
Hamas operative named Mohammed Amin Shobaki and eight other militants.
Israel has struck ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the past,
accusing Hamas militants of using them for transportation.
However, none of the dead staffers from the Red Crescent and Civil
Defense had that name, and no other bodies were reported found at the
site, raising questions over the military’s suggestion that alleged
militants were among the rescue workers.
The military did not immediately respond to requests for the names of
the other alleged militants killed or for comment on how the emergency
workers came to be buried.
The United Nations on Monday demanded “justice and answers” for the
Israeli killings of emergency responders.
U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher made the demands saying: “They were
killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives.”
After a ceasefire that lasted roughly two months, Israel relaunched its
military campaign in Gaza on March 18. Since then, bombardment and new
ground assaults that have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, according
to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry’s count does not distinguish
between militants and civilians, but it says over half those killed are
women and children.
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Mourners gather around the bodies of 8 Red Crescent emergency
responders, recovered in Rafah a week after an Israeli attack, as
they are transported for burial from a hospital in Deir al-Balah,
Gaza Strip, on Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Aid workers say ambulance teams and humanitarian staff have come
under fire in the renewed assault. A worker with the charity World
Central Kitchen was killed Friday by an Israeli strike that hit next
to a kitchen distributing free meals. A March 19 Israeli tank strike
on a U.N. compound killed a staffer, the U.N. said, though Israel
denies being behind the blast.
Mass grave
For days, Israeli forces would not allow access to the site where
the emergency teams disappeared, the U.N. said.
On Wednesday, a U.N. convoy tried to reach the site but encountered
Israeli troops opening fire on people.
The convoy saw a woman who had been shot lying in the road. The
dashboard video shows staff talking about retrieving the woman. Then
two people are seen walking across the road. Gunfire rings out and
they flee. One stumbles, apparently wounded, before he is shot and
falls onto his face to the ground. The U.N. said the team retrieved
the body of the woman and left.
On Sunday, the U.N. said teams were able to reach the site after the
Israeli military informed it where it had buried the bodies, in a
barren area on the edges of Tel al-Sultan. Footage released by the
U.N shows workers from PRCS and Civil Defense, wearing masks and
bright orange vests, digging through hills of dirt that appeared to
have been piled up by Israeli bulldozers.
The footage shows them digging out multiple bodies wearing orange
emergency vests. Some of the bodies are found piled on top of each
other. At one point, they pull out a body in a Civil Defense vest
out of the dirt, and it is revealed to be a torso with no legs.
Several ambulances and a U.N. vehicle, all heavily damaged or torn
apart, are also buried in the dirt.
“Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,” said
Jonathan Whittall, with the U.N. humanitarian office OCHA, speaking
at the site in the video. “We’re digging them out in their uniforms,
with their gloves on. They were here to save lives.”
“It’s absolute horror what has happened here,” he said.
Funerals
A giant crowd gathered on Monday outside the morgue of Nasser
Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis as the bodies of the
eight slain PRCS workers were brought out for funerals. Their bodies
were laid out on stretchers wrapped in white cloth with the Red
Crescent logo on it and their photos, as family and others held
funeral prayers over them. Funerals for the seven others followed.
“They were killed in cold blood by the Israeli occupation, despite
the clear nature of their humanitarian mission,” Raed al-Nimis, the
Red Crescent spokesperson in Gaza, told the AP.
Israeli troops have killed at least 30 Red Crescent medics over the
course of the war. Among them were two killed in February 2024 when
they tried to rescue Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old girl who was killed
along with six other relatives when they were trapped in their car
under Israeli fire in northern Gaza.
From Geneva, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies, Jagan Chapagain, said the staffer killed
last week “wore emblems that should have protected them; their
ambulances were clearly marked.”
“All humanitarians must be protected,” he said.
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Keath and Khaled reported from Cairo
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