A video recording, discovered on the cellphone of one of the paramedics who was found along with 14 other aid workers in a mass grave in the Gazan city of Rafah in late March and obtained by The New York Times, shows that the ambulances and fire truck that they were traveling in were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.
Officials from the Palestine Red Crescent Society said at a news conference on Friday at the United Nations moderated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies that they had presented the nearly seven-minute recording to the U.N. Security Council.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said earlier this week that Israeli forces did not “randomly attack” an ambulance, but that several vehicles “were identified advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals toward Israeli troops, prompting them to shoot. Colonel Shoshani said earlier in the week that nine of those killed were Palestinian militants. Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video.
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
The convoy stops when it encounters a vehicle that had veered onto the side of the road — one ambulance had been dispatched earlier to aid wounded civilians and had come under attack. The new rescue vehicles detoured to the side of the road.
Rescue workers, at least two of whom can be seen wearing uniforms, are seen exiting a fire truck and an ambulance marked with the emblem of the Red Crescent and approaching the ambulance derailed to the side.
Then, the sounds of intense gunfire break out.
A barrage of gunshots is seen and heard in the video hitting the convoy.
The camera shakes, the video goes dark. But the audio continues for five minutes, and the rat-a-tat sound of gunfire does not stop. A man says in Arabic that there are Israelis present on the scene.
The paramedic filming is heard on the video franticly reciting, over and over, the “shahada,” or a Muslim declaration of faith, which people recite when facing death. “There is no God but God, Muhammad is his messenger,” the paramedic is heard saying. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die.
“Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose — to help people,” he said. “Allahu akbar,” God is great, he says.
In the backdrop, a commotion of voices from distraught aid workers and soldiers shouting commands in Hebrew at each other can be heard. It was not clear what they were exactly saying.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society spokeswoman, Nebal Farsakh, said in an interview from the West Bank city of Ramallah that the paramedic who filmed the video was later found with a bullet in his head in the mass grave. His name has not been disclosed yet because he has relatives living in Gaza who are concerned about Israeli retaliation, the U.N. diplomat said.
At the news conference, held at the U.N. headquarters, the president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, and his deputy, Marwan Jilani, told reporters that the evidence the society has collected — including the video and audio from the incident, and forensic examination of the bodies — contradicted Israel’s version of events
The deaths of the aid workers, who first went missing on March 23, has drawn international scrutiny and condemnation in recent days. The U.N. and the Palestine Red Crescent said the aid workers were not carrying weapons and posed not threat.
“Their bodies have been targeted from a very close range,” said Dr. Khatib, adding that Israel did not provide information on the missing medics’ whereabouts for days. “They knew exactly where they were because they killed them,” he said. “Their colleagues were in agony, their families were in agony. They kept us for eight days in the dark.”
It took five days after the rescue vehicles came under attack and fell silent, for the United Nations and Red Crescent to negotiate with the Israeli military for safe passage to search for the missing people. On Sunday, rescue teams found 15 bodies, most in a shallow mass grave along with their crushed ambulances and a vehicle marked with the U.N. logo.
The area where the convoy stops in the video was captured in a satellite image a few hours later and analyzed by The Times. At that point, the five ambulances and the fire truck had been moved off the road and clustered together.
Two days later, a new satellite image of the area showed the vehicles were apparently buried. Next to disturbed earth are three Israeli military bulldozers and an excavator. Additionally, bulldozers erected earthen barriers on the road in both directions from the mass grave.
One member of the Palestinian Red Crescent is still missing and Israel has not said whether he is detained or has been killed, Dr. Khatib said.
Dr. Ahmad Dhair, a forensic doctor who examined some of the bodies in Gaza’s Nasser hospital, said four out of the five aid workers he examined were killed by multiple gunshots, including wounds to the head, torso, chest and joints. One paramedic employee of the Red Crescent in the convoy was detained and then released by the Israeli military and provided witness account of Israeli military shooting at the ambulances, the U.N. and Red Crescent Society said.
Dylan Winder, the representative of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to the U.N., called the incident an outrage and said it represented the single deadliest attack on Red Cross and Red Crescent Society workers any where in the world since 2017.
Volker Türk, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the council that an independent investigation must be conducted into Israel’s killing of the aid workers and that the incident raises “further concerns over the commission of war crimes by the Israeli military.”
Neil Collier, Sanjana Varghese and Ephrat Livni contributed reporting. Natalie Reneau contributed video editing.
