Palestinian paramedical paramedics shot by Israeli forces had linked hands, eyewitnesses say | Gaza

Some of the bodies of 15 paramedical paramedics and Palestinian rescue, killed by Israeli forces and buried in a serious mass nine days ago in Gaza, were found with their hands or legs attached and had ball injuries in the head and chest, according to two eyepieces.

The accounts of the witnesses are added to a set of accumulated evidence pointing towards a potentially serious war crime on March 23, when teams of ambulance of the Palestinian Red Red Red and Civil Defense were sent to the places of an air strike in the early hours of the morning.

International humanitarian teams were not allowed to access the site this weekend. A body was recovered on Saturday. Fourteen others were found in a sandy tomb on the site on Sunday and were brought back for autopsies in the neighboring town of Khan Younis.

Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, a principal doctor of the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, has witnessed the arrival of certain remains.

“I could see three bodies when they were transferred to Nasser Hospital. They had bullets in the chest and head. They were executed. They had their hands attached, “said Farra. “They attached them so that they could not move and then killed them.”

He provided photos he had said that he had taken one of the dead when he arrived at the hospital. The images show a hand at the end of a black shirt with long sleeves with a black cord tied around the wrist.

Another witness, an official of an international assistance agency who participated in the resumption of Rafah’s remains on Sunday, also said he saw evidence of one of the dead after being detained.

“I saw the bodies with my own eyes when we found them in the grave of the mass,” said the witness, who did not want his name to be used for his own safety, in The Guardian in a telephone interview. “They had signs of several strokes in the chest. One of them had tied legs. One was shot in the head. They were executed.”

The accounts add to the allegations formulated by a senior official of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Palestinian Civil Defense and the Gaza Ministry of Health that certain victims had been killed after being detained and deposited by Israeli troops.

The incident intervened after the Israeli government ended a two-month ceasefire and resumed its military campaign against Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza on March 17, with heavy air bombings and ground operations. Rafah residents were ordered to leave the city on Monday, before Israeli soil operations.

The International Criminal Tribunal published arrest mandates against war crimes in November against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, and the CPI prosecutor said that he was still investigating Israeli forces and Hamas for alleged atrocities.

The victims were said to have been killed on March 23, including two first hours when their ambulance was subjected to an Israeli fire when he was on the way to collect people injured in a previous air strike. The other 13 dead were in a convoy of ambulances and civil defense vehicles sent to recover the bodies of their two colleagues. One of the dead was a UN employee. A paramedical paramedics of the Red Crescent, named Assad al-Nassasra, is always missing.

The UN said that ambulances and other vehicles had been buried in sand by bulldozers alongside the bodies of the dead, in what seems to have been an attempt to conceal the murders. The United Nations video sequences taken by the recovery team have shown a crushed UN vehicle, ambulances and a fire truck which had been flattened and buried in the sand by the Israeli army.

“It’s a hard blow for us … These people were slaughtered,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Coordination Office on Tuesday. “Normally, we are not short of words and we are the spokespersons, but sometimes we find it difficult to find them. This is one of these cases. “

The Israeli army said that his “initial evaluation” of the incident found that his troops had opened fire on several vehicles “advancing with suspicion to FDI troops without headlights or emergency signals”, and has so far, without proof, that Hamas fighters and other activists had used ambulances to hide.

The Israeli defense forces have so far not answered the questions, first asked on Monday, about the reports that the bodies and their vehicles had been buried or the allegations that some had been slaughtered after being detained.

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Dr. Bashar Murad, director of health programs of the Red Crescent in Gaza, said that at least one of the organizations recovered from paramedical paramedics had been linked to the hands, and that one of the paramedical paramedics had been on appeal to the ambulance distributor when the attack took place.

During this call, Murad said, shots fired at close range could be heard as well as the voices of Israeli soldiers on the scene speaking in Hebrew, ordering the detention of at least certain paramedical ambulancers.

“The shots were taken from a distance. They could be heard during the call between the signal manager and the medical teams who survived and telephoned the ambulance center to get help. The soldiers’ voices were clearly audible in Hebrew and very close, as well as the sound of gunshots.”

“Gather them to the wall and provide constraints to attach them,” was one of the lines which, according to Murad, could be heard by the distributor. He said the call had not been recorded.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, said that the bodies had been found with at least about 20 shots in each of them and confirmed that at least one of them had his linked legs. “

In a statement published on Monday, the Gaza Ministry of Health said: “They were executed, some of them handcuffed and suffered injury to the head and chest. They were buried in a deep hole to prevent the identification of their identity.”

On Monday, the FDIs issued evacuation orders covering most of Rafah, indicating that it could soon launch another important field operation, eight days after paramedical paramedics and rescuers were killed.

According to the Red Crescent, an ambulance was sent to harvest the victims of the air strike in the early hours of March 23 and called for a support ambulance. The first ambulance arrived at the hospital safely, but the contact was lost with the support ambulance at 3:30 am. A first report on the scene said he had been shot and that the two paramedical paramedics inside killed.

The president of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Dr Younis al-Khatib, said that the FDI had hampered the collection of bodies for several days. The FDI said that it had facilitated the evacuation of bodies as soon as “operational circumstances” allowed.

“The bodies have been recovered with difficulties because they were buried in the sand, some showing signs of decomposition,” said the Red Crescent.

Their burial had been discouraged while waiting for the autopsies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Autopsies have now been produced, according to hospital sources, and a full report should be submitted to the Ministry of Health in Gaza within 10 days.