The United Nations accuses Israel of killing 15 rescue workers in Gaza

As the Israeli forces in the southern city of Rafa in Gaza before dawn on Sunday, the ambulance crew was launched to evacuate the civilians who were wounded by the Israeli bombing. But the ambulance and its crew were wounded on the way.

The United Nations said that several other ambulances and a fire truck went to the scene over the next few hours to save them, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, as a United Nations car did. Seventeen people were sent in total.

Then they were silent.

It took five days to negotiate the United Nations, the Crescent and the Red Crescent, with the Israeli army for the safe passage to search for missing persons. After receiving clearance, UN officials said, the retrieval team found 15 dead, most of their bodies were thrown into a mass grave.

On Sunday, the United Nations said that Israel killed them – a rare accusation by the organization, which is usually cautious in appointing a clear blame.

“They were killed by the Israeli forces while trying to save lives.” He said on x. “We ask for answers and justice.”

Red Crescent, International Committee for Red Cross The United Nations said that all the dead were human workers who should not be attacked. The Red Crescent described a war crime and demanded accountability.

Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nadaf Shoshani, He said on x On Monday, nine of the dead were Palestinian militants. He said that the Israeli forces “did not attack randomly” an ambulance, but many vehicles were identified “suspicious” without the headlights or emergency signals towards the Israeli forces, which led them to shoot.

UN officials said the vehicles were clearly distinguished as rescue vehicles.

Colonel Shoshani said that during the attack, the Israeli military forces killed Hamas, Muhammad Amin Ibrahim Shobaki, who participated on October 7, 2023, an attack on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza.

He said that the Israeli forces also killed eight other agents of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic jihad, an extremist group. The gunmen accused “once again the exploitation of medical facilities and equipment for their activities.”

He did not say directly whether the militants were in emergency vehicles or eating the identities of the other six people who were killed.

After the vehicles were shot, UN officials said the Israeli forces bulldozed and crushed ambulances, fire truck and the United Nations.

The Red Crescent said that one of the doctors was still missing. The only survivor, a Red Crescent worker, was beaten and issued by Israeli forces on the same day, according to the relief group. He told red and United Nations officials that the Israeli forces had killed both other crew members of his ambulance.

UN officials said that among the 17 people involved, 10 Red Crescent workers, and six respondents from the Civil Defense in Gaza and one of them was a United Nations worker.

The best humanitarian official of the United Nations in Gaza, Jonathan Whital, joined the retrieval team Publish photos On X it explains the collapsed vehicles – peeling of distorted minerals flowing from the sand. The “Big Blue” N “on the United Nations vehicle was still visible on it.

He said in a video message shared by the United Nations: “One after the other, they were beaten, and they were beaten. Their bodies were collected and buried in this collective grave.”

Days after their disappearance, the United Nations team, who were looking for new scenes of chaos and violence in his Rafah, including “Hundreds of Civilians Flee at fire”, Mr. Whital He said on x. He said that a woman was shot at the back of the head.

He posted a video showing what he said came after that: Two men seemed to the road, apparently to recover the woman’s body. Then one of them was also shot. Mr. Whital did not say who launched the shots.

UN officials said on Thursday, the UN convoy found collapsed vehicles. Mr. Whital said that the hurricane hours resulted in one body, a civil defense worker buried under the firefighting network. They returned to the remaining bodies on Sunday.

Mr. Whital narrated the search for bodies in the video message.

“We are digging them in their official uniforms, with their gloves,” he said. “They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave.”

He said that the grave was distinguished by an emergency lighting from one of the destroyed ambulances.

The Israeli army spokesman said that the vehicles, unlike another along the same way earlier that day, did not receive permission from the Israeli forces to be there.

Nabeul Farisak, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, said that when ambulances erupted at about 3:30 am on March 23, the Israeli forces did not close after the region as a “red area”, where ambulances must purify their movements with Israel.

Israel immediately did not take charges of burying people in mass graves or crushing their cars.

The Red Crescent said, in general, 27 of the paramedics They killed Since the war began.

A temporary stop that stopped fighting in Gaza from January to March 18, when Israel Broken.

Sheikh Ahmed Al -Gharraf and Aaron Bokman She contributed to the reports from Jerusalem.