A Palestinian paramedic who was present at an incident in which 15 of his colleagues were killed in southern Gaza last month said he saw Israeli troops firing at emergency vehicles that he later saw stained with blood.
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 Israeli military has opened an investigation into the incident, which by its account occurred when unmarked vehicles approached an Israeli position in the dark without lights or special markings and without previous coordination, factors it said had made the vehicles’ advance appear suspicious.
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.”
