A The survivor of a massacre of Palestinian paramedics and rescuers in Gaza said he saw the Israeli troops open fire on a succession of ambulances and rescue vehicles of the Red Crescent, then use a bulldozer to bury the wreck in a pit.
Munther Abed, a 27-year-old volunteer, was at the back of the first ambulance to arrive at the scene of an air strike in the Hashashin of Rafah district before dawn on March 23, when she was subjected to an intense Israeli fire. His two colleagues from the Red Crescent Sitting at the front were killed but he survived by throwing himself on the ground of the vehicle.
“The door was opened, and they were there – Israeli special forces in military uniforms, armed with rifles, green lasers and night vision glasses,” Abed told Guardian. “They dragged me out of the ambulance, keeping me opposite to avoid seeing what had happened to my colleagues.”
He was beaten, detained with his hands attached and forced to lie on the ground, from where he could see part of what happened when other friends and colleagues arrived on the scene in ambulances and fire trucks, each run in a hail of shots. In total, eight members of the Red Crescent and paramedical ambulance crew, six civil defense rescuers and a UN employee were killed. Their bodies were found alongside their vehicles crushed last weekend in a sandbank that Bed watched the troops dig. Other witnesses told the Guardian that some dead had had their hands or their feet equally.
An ambulance agent of the Red Crescent, Assad al-Nassara, remains unable, but Abed said that he had seen him alive and in Israeli detention in the vicinity of the murders. Nassara has not been seen since. So far, Abed is the only one to come back alive and tell his story.
He volunteered on March 23 at British Field Hospital ambulance station in Al-Mawasi, a coastal camp for displaced people, when the call arrived shortly after 4 hours of the emergency services in Hashashin, an area of Dunes Sandy Barren on the northern outskirts of Rafah. (The name means the assassins). Abed jumped at the back of an ambulance which left immediately. His friend, Mostafa Khufaga, was led, with another ambulance agent, Ezzédine Shaath, next to him.
Under international pressure, Israeli Defense Forces (FDI) said on Thursday that they were launching an official fire investigation. So far, however, the FDI has denied any reprehensible act, saying that it had shot vehicles “advancing with suspicion” without headlights or emergency signals. Abed said this account was manifestly false.
“The ambulance lights were clearly on, and the red crescent logo was visible while we are heading for the scene,” he said. The FDI described the region as an area of war, but Abed said that Hashashin was “a civilian domain where daily life took place as usual, not an designated combat zone”.
They had almost reached the site of the air strike reported at 4:20 am when they were criticized.
“From the moment the shooting started, I immediately taken covered on the ambulance floor. I heard nothing from my colleagues, except for the sounds of their last moments, hearing them take their last breath,” he said. “Suddenly, everything was silent, the ambulance stopped and the lights have turned off. The door on the driver’s side was opened, and I heard voices speak in Hebrew. Fear and panic have passed me, and I started to recite some quotes from the Koran.
“I was completely stripped, left only in my underwear, and my hands were linked behind my back,” recalls Abed. “They threw me to the ground, and the interrogation began. I have endured serious tortures, including blows, insults, death threats and suffocation when a soldier pressed a rifle against my neck. Another soldier held a dagger on my left shoulder. After a while, an officer arrived and ordered soldiers to stop, calling them “crazy” who did not know how to communicate. “
An elderly man and his son who were going to fish before sunrise were also detained and linked and made sleep on the ground next to Abed.
“Meanwhile, I noticed a civil defense vehicle and another ambulance approaching. As the two were welcomed with intense shots of the Israeli forces which lasted about five minutes. After stopping the shooting, I saw no one leave the vehicles,” he said.
“About five minutes later, two ambulances arrived from Rafah management on the road leading to the center of ambulance of the Red Crescent. I could only see the red lights of ambulances and hear the sound of gunshots. The additional five minutes passed and a third ambulance arrived from the management of Khan Younis, the same direction we had just.
“While the sun started to get up around 6 am, the landscape surrounding us has become clearer,” said Abed. “The tanks, quadcopters and drones came. The area was completely surrounded, and a large Israeli bulldozer and an excavator arrived. They started to dig a massive hole and launched the ambulances and the civil defense vehicle, buried them and covering the hole.
“As for my colleagues, I do not know their fate. I only saw Asad, but I am sure that the others were killed immediately after being killed,” he said.
The bodies of colleagues from Abed, Khufaga and Shaath, were unearthed of the same pit last weekend, as well as the remains of six other workers in the Red Crescent: Saleh Muamemer, Mohammad Bahloul, Mohammed Al-Heila, Ashraf Abu Labda, Raed Al-Sharif and Rifatt Radwan- one.
The FDI said that it had killed nine activists from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic jihad in the incident, but no other body was recovered from the grave of mass, and Abed was categorical, there were no militants traveling with the ambulances.
Abed himself was held for several hours, sometimes in a hole dug in the ground, during which he was completely stripped, beaten again and asked about his past. He was then forced to help the verification and photography of local populations who were ordered to leave the region and go to Al-Mawasi.
“Some women wore their children who had been killed. A mother wore her child, who had been shot in the chest and killed. Another mother wore her daughter, who had also been shot in the chest. Another girl wore their sister, who had been shot in the foot, and many elderly people were part. No one has arrested women and children, “he said.
“Then I started directing the men, bringing five at a time to stand in front of the camera,” said Abed. “Some of them have gone without incident, but others have been taken, dressed in white and placed in a large hole. I still don’t know what happened to them.”
Abed was released in the evening. His watch and underwear was returned, but not his identity card, his paramedical uniform or his shoes. He was told to head to Al-Mawasi and were finally able to point out a conducting red vehicle that passes.
He said he was still suffering from blows and described his state of mind as “broken”.
Abed volunteered for the red crescent since he was 18 years old and has worked in ambulances since the start of the war.
“We have entered this field out of love, despite the dangers that surround it and the risk that we face during the missions,” he said. But the work quickly slid from the dangerous to the mortal.
“We are no longer surprising that someone is killed. Anyone can be targeted because we are facing an occupation force that does not take into account international laws and treaties,” said Abed. “Each mission to which we are going to seem to be the last.”
