The Gaza media office on Saturday accused the Israeli military of carrying out a “brutal and unprecedented” execution of medical and civil defense crews in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood on March 23.
The statement followed the circulation of a viral video found on the phone of a Palestinian paramedic whose body was discovered in a mass grave with 14 colleagues. According to the office, the footage shows the team being killed by Israeli forces while performing humanitarian duties.
Calling the incident “another crime added to the occupation’s black record,” the media office said the footage “completely disproves the Israeli occupation’s false and misleading narrative” that the ambulances had approached “suspiciously” or without identification. The video, it said, “exposes the lies of the Israeli military.”
The office called it a “flagrant violation of all international conventions” and held the international community responsible for its silence.
It called for an “independent international investigation” into the execution of the medical and civil defense teams, as well as truth-finding missions to visit the targeted sites and mass graves where Israel “concealed the horrors of its ongoing genocide.”
It urged immediate protection for humanitarian teams operating in Gaza.
Later, Mahmoud Basal, the agency spokesperson, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that the video "refutes all of the Israeli army’s claims about the execution of our teams and the Red Crescent teams in Rafah."
He confirmed that the footage clearly shows "the teams were wearing official humanitarian uniforms and had their emergency lights visibly on – unmistakably so."
The spokesperson warned of the consequences of failing to hold Israel accountable, saying such negligence would only encourage it to commit further crimes against humanitarian service providers in Gaza.
Basal added that this also affects the morale and performance of humanitarian workers, who now feel that Israel is violating their protected status in plain sight of the world – with no consequences.
Concluding his remarks, Basal said the cold-blooded murder of paramedics and firefighters is "beyond imagination and unprecedented in modern history."
On March 31, the Israeli army claimed that the attack on the ambulances was not random, alleging that nine members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups were killed in the attack.
However, on March 30, the Palestine Red Crescent Society announced the discovery of 15 bodies following the Israeli attack.
According to Basal, several members of the civil defense team were found with their hands and feet bound and visible bullet wounds on their heads and torsos, suggesting they were executed at close range after being identified for their humanitarian work. One of the civil defense personnel had been decapitated, and the remaining bodies were found in pieces.
More than 50,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza in Israel's military onslaught since October 2023.
