Funeral service. Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has published mobile phone footage taken by a slain Palestinian paramedic refuting Israel’s account of why its soldiers opened fire on a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck on March 23, killing 15 rescue workers.
The video shows the vehicles moving in the dark with their headlights and emergency flashing lights switched on. Israeli forces then opened fire on the vehicles for several minutes.
The Israeli military initially denied the vehicles had their headlights or emergency signals on when its forces opened fire on them.
At least two emergency workers can be seen stepping out of the vehicles wearing reflective clothing. The rescuer filming the video with his phone is heard reciting Islamic prayers before being killed.
🚨 Video That Exposes the Israeli Occupation’s Lies
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has obtained a video from the family of a martyred EMT, found on his mobile phone after his body was recovered from a mass grave in Gaza. He was among 15 ambulance and relief team members… pic.twitter.com/8iWqULxijC
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) April 5, 2025
One rescuer can be heard in the video saying, “Forgive me, mother. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives.”
During the attack, occupation forces killed eight PRCS paramedics, six Gaza Civil Defense workers, and one UN employee. Israeli troops buried their bodies, and the destroyed vehicles in a shallow mass grave dug in the sand.
The mobile phone containing the video was found on one of the bodies.
The video confirms the testimony of paramedic Munther Abed.
“During day and at night, it’s the same thing. External and internal lights are on. Everything tells you it’s an ambulance vehicle that belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent. All lights were on until the vehicle came under direct fire,” Abed told the BBC.
He also denied he or his team had any connection to Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
“All crews are civilian. We don’t belong to any militant group. Our main duty is to offer ambulance services and save people’s lives. No more, no less,” he said.
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The occupation’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar claimed without evidence that several Hamas and PIJ fighters were killed in the incident.
“The IDF did not randomly attack an ambulance,” he claimed.
The Israeli army prevented the PRCS from accessing the site of the killing for eight days.
One paramedic, identified as Assad, is still unaccounted for.
On Friday, the President of the PRCS, Dr Younis Al-Khatib, showed the video to journalists during a press conference held at the UN headquarters in New York.
“We were praying that they will be alive. They kept us for eight days in the dark. Now, the only information we know is that Assad is missing. But there’s somebody who knows whether Assad has been killed somewhere else or Assad is detained in Israeli jails,” Khatib said.
The Vice President of the PRCS, Marwan Jilani, said, “I think the scale of this crime should force, that it should oblige the international community to do more and not to accept that this would be another incident that goes in the files and be forgotten after a few days.”
Jagan Chapagain, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, eulogized the slain medics stating, “Their ambulances were crushed and partly buried. Nearby were their bodies – also buried, en masse, in the sand. Our dead colleagues were still wearing their Red Crescent vests. In life, those uniforms signalled their status as humanitarian workers; they should have protected them. Instead, in death, those red vests became their shrouds.”
