The Israeli army said on Sunday that an investigation into the deadly attack of its soldiers against the doctors in Gaza last month had identified “several professional failures” and that a commander would be rejected.
The army had previously admitted to having made the attack in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, who killed 14 rescuers and a United Nations employees who spent after the others were slaughtered. But he had proposed changing explanations to explain why his troops shot emergency vehicles and said that she was investigating the episode, which caused an international condemnation and which experts described as a war crime.
Sunday – almost a month after the attack – the army published a statement summarizing its investigation.
“The examination has identified several professional failures, the violations of the orders and the fact of not reporting the incident,” he said.
The murderous shots of the rescuers result from an “operational misunderstanding” by the troops on the ground “who thought he had faced a tangible threat of enemy forces”. The shot on a United Nations vehicle, added the press release, involved “a violation of orders” in a combat framework.
Israeli troops shot the ambulances and a fire truck sent by Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, as well as the United Nations vehicle which has passed separately, according to witnesses, videos and audio of the attack.
The army said on Sunday that “due to poor night visibility”, the assistant commander on the ground “did not initially recognize vehicles as ambulances”.
Two weeks ago, the Israeli army acknowledged that some of its first claims, based on the accounts of the troops involved in the murder, were in part wrong.
Military officials had initially said, on several occasions and wrongly, that vehicles “advanced with suspicion” towards the troops “without headlights or emergency signals”.
The soldiers made income on this assertion one day after the New York Times published a video, discovered on the mobile phone of one of the dead paramedics, which showed the vehicles clearly marked flashing their lights and stopping before the attack.
Israeli soldiers later buried most of the bodies in a mass tomb, crushed the ambulances, the fire truck and a United Nations vehicle, and also buried them.
On Sunday, in the press release, the Israeli army said that “the abolition of bodies was reasonable in the circumstances, but that the decision to crush the vehicles was wrong”.
The commander of the involved brigade will receive a reprimand “for his global responsibility for the incident,” he said, while the assistant commander of the battalion will be rejected because of his responsibilities “and to provide an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief.”
Bilal Shbair Contribution of the Gaza and Vivian Yee of Cairo reports.
