The paramedical killings of Gaza: a visual chronology | Gaza

March 23

At 4:20 am, an ambulance of the Crescent-Rouge on the way to the collection of people injured by an air strike in Rafah is Israeli fire in Hashashin. Two paramedical paramedics are killed.

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A survivor, Munther Abed, is detained and questioned. A few hours later, a convoy including ambulances, a fire truck, vehicles from the Ministry of Health and a United Nations car were sent to recover the bodies of the two paramedical ambulancers. It is also under fire. Two vehicles from the Ministry of Health move away, but contact is lost with the rest of the convoy. Two ambulances sent from Rafah also disappear.

Six days earlier, Israel had ended a two-month ceasefire and resumed its military campaign against Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza with heavy air bombings and ground operations.

March 24

The Gaza Civil Defense Agency says it has not heard of missing people. Access to the site is blocked by Israeli defense forces (IDF).

March 26

A convoy of vehicles carrying officials of the United Nations Bureau for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is trying to access the site. During her way, the Ocha team saw a woman shoot, the ball striking her at the back of the head and a man who tries to recover it too. The woman’s body is recovered and put in a United Nations vehicle.

March 27

The Ocha team finally goes to the site. They report find the ambulances, the United Nations vehicle and the crushed and partially buried fire truck. The organization of a civil defense worker is recovered under the fire truck, but the recovery mission must withdraw as the situation becomes dangerous.

March 28

The Civil Defense Agency claims to have reached the site and found the body of its team leader there, as well as an ambulance and the Red Crescent fire truck, which, according to him, was “reduced to a pile of scrap”.

March 30

OCHA officials and the Red Crescent Workers return to the site and find the bodies of eight workers in the Red Crescent, the other five civil defense stakeholders and a member of the UN staff buried in a mass tomb. A ninth worker of the Red Crescent remains not counted.

The crushed UN vehicle and the fire truck can be seen in photographs taken on the scene.

A satellite image shows the scene of the attack, with the Ocha convoy aligned to the north.

In a video filmed on the scene, Jonathan Whittall, the chief of Ocha in Palestine, says that the dead were filmed “one by one” then buried in a mass tomb.

March 31

Burials are postponed autopsies. The chief of Ocha, Tom Fletcher, says that the dead were found buried by their vehicles destroyed and well marked. “They were killed by Israeli forces when they were trying to save lives,” said Fletcher. “We demand answers and justice.”

The FDIs claim that his soldiers opened fire on vehicles because they “advanced the troops of TSAhal without headlights or emergency signals” and allegedly, without providing, that Hamas and the Islamic militants of jihad were one of the people killed. None was in the grave of the mass.

April 1

Two witnesses tell the Guardian that some of the bodies recovered from the tomb had had their hands or feet attached, suggesting that they were slaughtered after being detained. An official of the Red Crescent says that Israeli soldiers could be heard – on a telephone line open to one of the paramedics at the time of the convoy shooting – ordering constraints to hold apparent survivors of the convoy.

April 2

A legal medicine consultant who examined five of the organizations says that there are evidence of execution style murder in certain cases on the basis of the “specific and intentional” location of the shots taken at close range. British Foreign Minister David Lammy says Gaza has become the most dangerous place in the world for humanitarian workers and calls managers to be held responsible.

April 3

The Israeli army says it is investigating the killings. He maintains that the “terrorists” advanced in ambulances.

Abed, the survivor, told the Guardian that he was detained and beaten and had to look at a ambulance and rescue vehicle after the other approached the scene and was subjected to intense shots. He said he witnessed the wreckage buried by military bulldozers and that he saw the worker of the disappeared red crescent, Assad al-Nassa, alive and in Israeli detention. After several hours of Israeli interrogation, Abed was released and left to go home.