What we know about the issue of relief workers in Gaza, who were killed by Israeli fire

In its preliminary accounts, the Israeli army admitted that its forces were involved in the killing last month from 15 people in southern Gaza, in which the United Nations said they were all workers of paramedics and rescue.

The acceptance came on Saturday, the next day video The New York Times seemed to contradict the main part of the previous version of the army. While the army said it had shot the vehicles after “raised suspiciously”, the video showed noticeable ambulances and a fire truck.

The episode painted international scrutiny and condemnation. After revealing the flagrant contradictions in the Israeli account, the army seemed to move more quickly than usual to address the issue. Internal military investigations can continue in dubious deadly episodes for several months, and even years.

This is what we know so far:

The version (versions) of the Israeli army

In her initial statements after the discovery of the bodies, the army insisted that its forces opened fire when a convoy approached them “without the headlights or emergency signals.”

But the video – which was discovered on the mobile phone of the champion, which was found in a mass grave – shows that ambulances and fire truck have emergency lights at a time when the Israeli forces fired them.

The army now says that the first account of the forces on the ground was a “mistake.”

Military officials had previously confirmed that nine of the dead were Hamas agents or Islamic jihad. They only called one of the nine and did not provide any evidence of their demand.

On Saturday, a military official said that the journalists have briefed the initial results of the internal investigation that at least six out of 15 Hamas agents, but they still have not provided evidence. The official spoke on the condition that his identity is not disclosed under the army’s bases.

The official said that the reserve forces from the infantry brigade were before the meeting with the emergency vehicles, which were lying in an ambush along a road to the north of the city of Rafah in Ghazan before dawn on March 23. At four in the morning, they killed what the official described as security officials in Hamas and detained one third.

After two hours, with the outbreak of dawn, the emergency convoy approached the same place. The official said that when rescue workers began to leave their cars, the Israeli forces believed that they were Hamas agents heading to them and opened fire from afar.

“They had a good reason for anxiety” and that it would be wrong to immediately assume that the case was one of the “killing in cold blood”, citing the use of the frequent Hamas fighters for the civilian exaggeration as a cover.

Mr. Harril said that the episode raises questions about the behavior of the soldiers and the version of the events they reported from the ground.

The military official denied reports that some bodies were found binding and shooting at a close distance. He said that the forces had buried the bodies to protect them from wild animals and used heavy equipment to transport the vehicles hidden from the road, and to distort them.

What do relief groups say

Representatives of the Red Crescent Society in Palestine said last week that ambulances were launched at about 3:30 am on March 23 to evacuate Palestinian civilians who were injured in the Israeli circumstance.

The Red Crescent said that an ambulance and its crew were injured by the Israeli forces and that many ambulances and a fire truck are heading to the scene of the accident over the next few hours to save them. The United Nations said a United Nations vehicle had been sent.

Seventeen people were sent in total, including 10 red crescent workers, six emergency respondents from the Civil Defense Service in Gaza and one was a United Nations worker.

It took days to negotiate to reach the recovery of the 15 bodies. The Red Crescent said that one of the doctors was still missing and that the Israeli forces had been detained by one and were released later.

The Red Crescent said that “targeting” Israel from the paramedics in the paramedics should “be considered a war crime” and demanded the investigation. He added that the latest killings raised to 27 of the number of its members who were killed during the war, which started on October 7, 2023, with a deadly attack by Hamas on southern Israel.

On Friday, the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Dr. Younis Al -Khatib, told reporters that based on the autopsy and criminal evidence, emergency workers were “targeted from a very close distance.”

A reaction in Israel until now

The case has received wider coverage in Israel since the video was exposed. The politicians mostly remained silent, and they may wait for the army to complete its investigation.

Mr. Harril, a military affairs analyst, said that the investigation was the first test of the recently installed military president, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, in relation to the international predecessor of the army.

The issue of accountability remains the greatest. Yesterday, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, found that among the 573 cases of war crimes suspected in Gaza that have been examined over the past decade by the army, only one led to prosecution.

Gabi Sobilman It contributed to the reports of Revoff, Israel.