Humanitarian agencies have rejected Israel’s findings of a military probe into the killing of 15 medical workers in Gaza, calling it a “fabricated investigation”.
Fifteen medics, including eight with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, six members of the civil defence unit in Gaza, and a UN staffer were killed in Rafah by the Israeli military on 23 March.
Israeli troops bulldozed over the bodies along with their mangled vehicles, burying them in a mass grave, according to reports. UN and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) military on Sunday claimed an internal investigation identified “several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident”.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society and Gaza’s civil defence service on Monday rejected the findings, calling the report “full of lies”. The UN’s humanitarian agency said the investigation underscores “the occupation’s persistence in shielding the truth from the world”.
The aid agency accused Israel of making “fallacious allegations” that medical rescue teams are part of Hamas and asked why Israel continues to detain a paramedic who survived the attack.
Israel at first claimed the medics’ vehicles were acting suspiciously and did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire. But the army later backtracked after cellphone video recovered from one medic showed the ambulances had lights flashing and logos visible as they pulled up to help another ambulance that earlier came under fire.
“We call on the international community to abstain from validating the results of the occupation’s fabricated investigation,” the Red Crescent added.
Gaza’s civil defence unit, which rescues victims of airstrikes, said the military was lying in an effort to justify targeting of the rescue convoys.
“The video filmed by one of the paramedics proves that the Israeli occupation’s narrative is false and demonstrates that it carried out summary executions,” Mohammed al Mughair, an official with the civil defence unit, told AFP news agency. He accused Israel of seeking to “circumvent” its obligations under international law.
The Israeli military in its report claimed the incident took place in a “hostile and dangerous combat zone” and the commander on the ground perceived the approaching vehicle as an immediate threat. The IDF blamed “poor night visibility”.
UN’s humanitarian chief for Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said “real accountability undermines international law and makes the world a more dangerous place”. “Without accountability, we risk continuing to watch atrocities unfolding, and the norms designed to protect us all eroding,” he said.
The military said six of those killed were Hamas militants, but has given little evidence to support the claim.
Israel has previously accused Hamas of moving and hiding its fighters inside ambulances and emergency vehicles, as well as in hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. It argues that this justifies the strikes on them. Medical personnel deny the accusations.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 150 emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Civil Defence, most of them while on duty, as well as over 1,000 health workers, according to the UN.
More than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. The war was triggered by Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, when the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage.
Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian official told the BBC that Qatari and Egyptian mediators have proposed a new formula to end the war in Gaza and the truce to last between five and seven years.
This comes as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week said in a late-night televised address that while war came with a heavy price, Israel had “no choice but to continue fighting for our very existence, until victory.”
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