Telephone sequences seem to contradict Israel’s account in the murder of the troops of 15 Palestinian doctors

United Nations (AP) – Telephone video of one of the 15 Palestinian doctors killed by Israeli forces last month seems to contradict the Israeli claims that doctors’ vehicles did not have emergency signals on the moment when the troops opened fire on the south Gaza.

The images show that the Defense of the Red Crescent and the Civil Defense driving slowly leading to the lights of their flashing emergency vehicles, the visible logos, while they stopped to help an ambulance that had been criticized earlier. The teams do not seem to act unusually or threatening as three doctors emerge and go to the strutal ambulance.

Their vehicles are immediately of a gunshot barrier, which lasts more than five minutes with brief breaks. The owner of the phone can be heard praying.

“Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose, mother, to help people, ”he cries, his weak voice.

Eight Red Crescent Staff, six civil defense workers and a member of UN staff were killed during the shooting before dawn on March 23 by Israeli troops conducting operations in Tel-Sultan, a district of the city of southern Gaza de Rafah. The troops then bulldozer the bodies with their mutilated vehicles, buried them in a mass tomb. The UN and the rescuers could not reach the site until a week later to unearth the bodies.

Marwan Jilani, vice-president of the Palestinian Red Company, Marwan Jilani, said that the phone with the images had been found in the pocket of one of his killed employees. The Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations distributed video to the United Nations Security Council. The Associated Press obtained the video of a United Nations diplomat on condition of anonymity because it was not made public.

An ambulancer who survived, Munzer Abed, confirmed the veracity of the video in the AP. Two concrete structures in the shape of a bloc visible in the video are also visible in a video of the UN published on Sunday showing the recovery of the bodies of the site – a sign that they are in the same place.

Asked about the video, the Israeli army said on Saturday that the incident was “being examined”. He said: “All complaints, including the documentation circulating on the incident, will be examined in depth and deeply to understand the sequence of events and the treatment of the situation.”

A doctor remains missing

The Israeli army said earlier that it had opened fire on vehicles because they were advancing “suspicion” on neighboring troops without headlights or emergency signals.

Palestinian chief Red Crescent Society, Younes Al-Khatib, called for an independent investigation. “We do not trust the army surveys,” he told a briefing on the United Nations on Friday.

A doctor, Assaad al-Nassasra, is still missing, says the red crescent. Abed said he saw Al-Nassasra leading his eyes bandaged by Israeli troops. Al-Khatib said that the organization had asked the soldiers where he was holding the staff member.

Al-Khatib said that men killed had been “targeted at close range” and that an medical-legal autopsy report would soon be published.

Israel accused Hamas of having moved and hidden its fighters within ambulances and emergency vehicles, as well as in hospitals and other civil infrastructure, arguing that it justifies strikes. Medical staff largely deny the accusations.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 150 emergency stakeholders in the Red Crescent and Civil Defense, most of them in service, as well as more than 1,000 health workers, according to the UN, the Israeli army is rarely investigating such incidents.

Ambulances under an Israeli fire dam

The ambulances began to head to Tel Al-Sultan around 3:50 am on March 23, responding to injured reports, said Jilani. The first ambulance returned safely with at least one victim, he said. But, he said, the subsequent ambulances were criticized.

His trembling hands, Abed said on the front of Saturday that his ambulance entered the region, his siren lights were lit. “All of a sudden, I tell you, there was a direct shot on us”, so intense that the vehicle stops, “he said.

A 10-year-old veteran of the Red Crescent, Abed said he was sitting in the back seat and dodged on the ground. He said he couldn’t hear anything from his two colleagues in the front seat – the only others in the vehicle. They seem to have been killed instantly.

Israeli troops, some with night glasses, dragged the ambulance door and on the ground, he said. They made him undress on his underwear, defeated him on his entire body with their rifle butts, then tied his hands behind his back, he said.

They questioned him, questioning his paramedical training for him and how many people were in the ambulance with him, he said. A soldier pressed the muzzle of his automatic rifle in his neck; Another strolled his knife blade in Abed’s palm, almost cut him, until a third soldier withdraws them and warns Abed: “They are crazy.”

Abed said he was a witness to open fire to the following vehicles to arrive. The soldiers forced him on his stomach and pressed a weapon behind his back, he said, and in the midst of the shooting in the dark, he could therefore only see two civil defense vehicles.

The video shows the terror of Medic

The video of the phone shows a rescue of the red crescent of civil defense vehicles which was sent after the loss of contact with the ambulance struck. Taken from the dashboard of a vehicle, it shows several ambulances and a fire truck descending a road through a sterile area in the dark. Emergency lights on their roofs flash all along.

They arrive at an ambulance on the side of the road and stop next to it, their lights still flash. No Israeli troupe is visible.

“Lord, leave them well,” said a man in the car. Then he shouts: “They are thrown on the ground!” – Apparently referring to the bodies. Three men in orange clothing in civilian defense can be seen out of the vehicles and head for the ambulance arrested.

A shot sounds and one of the men seems to fall. Shops burst out.

The man holding the phone seems to detach himself from the car and on the floor, but then the screen becomes black, although the audio continues. The shots last almost 5 and a half minutes – with long heavy dams followed by silences punctuated by blows and individual cries and cries.

Throughout, the man with the phone says again and again: “There is no God that God and Muhammad is the prophet of God” – The profession of faith that Muslims say when they fear that they are about to die. Towards the end of the six -minute and 40 second video, you can hear voices screaming in Hebrew. “The Jews arrive,” said the man, referring to the Israeli soldiers, before the video cut.

Israel claims to have found activists afterwards

The Israeli army says that after the shooting, the troops determined that they had killed a figure of Hamas named Mohammed Amin Shobaki and eight other activists. However, none of the 15 doctors killed has this name, and no other organization is known to have been found on the site, raising questions about the army’s claims they were in vehicles.

The army did not say what happened to the body of Shobaki or released the names of other alleged activists.

Jonathan Whittall, an interim chief in Gaza of the United Nations Humanitarian Office OCHA, rejected allegations according to which the killed doctors of Hamas, saying that humanitarian staff had worked with the same doctors before in the evacuation of patients from hospitals and other tasks.

“These are paramedical crews that I have personally encountered before,” he said. “They were buried in their uniforms with their gloves. They were ready to save lives. ”

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Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, a band of Gaza; Keath of Cairo. Journalists AP Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Areej Hazboun contributed to this report.

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