It was still black when a group of ambulances and a fire truck sent by the Palestinian emergency intervention services slowed down in Rafah, the most southern city of Gaza on March 23. They had been sent to find their paramedical colleagues, who had headed for an ambulance during a rescue mission earlier this morning before disappearing.
Now, the convoy has stopped next to the missing ambulance, which was standing next to the road near certain UN warehouses. When the paramedical paramedics came out to watch, Israeli soldiers about 50 meters opened fire on them, according to two men who said they had witnessed the shots.
The two men saw what happened, they said, because they were detained by the same Israeli troops.
One of the two, Munther Abed, 27, a volunteer paramedical, said that he had been arrested after surviving a previous attack on the missing ambulance who had killed two other crew members, then was detained. The other man, Dr. Saeed al-Bardawil, 55, doctor, said that he had been arrested alongside Mr. Abed when he and his son were arrested by Israeli troops on the way to go fishing around 4:45 am
The New York Times interviewed the two men separately in Gaza a few days after the United Nations said that she had found the bodies of 15 rescuers – eight from Palestine Red Crescent Society, six of the Civil Defense of Gaza and one of the United Nations – in a serious mass. Their ambulances, their fire truck and a United Nations vehicle, which had been crushed, were half buried nearby. The United Nations accused Israel of killing the 15 workers, throwing their bodies and destroying vehicles.
The accounts of the two men seem to support these accusations. Although their stories could not be confirmed independently, the details they gave also corresponded to the sequence of events in a video obtained and verified by the New York Times, discovered on the mobile phone of one of the dead paramedics. This video shows an intense damage of gunshots hitting the convoy just when Dawn breaks.
