Palestinian Red Crescent condemns Israeli attacks on paramedics
Younis al-Khatib, president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, has just held a news conference in Ramallah.
Here are some of his key comments:
- The Palestine Red Crescent strongly condemns the Israeli targeting of paramedics as they carried out their humanitarian mission in Gaza a week ago.
- It condemns “deliberate attempts” by Israeli forces to “cripple” rescue attempts.
- A Palestinian life is not merely a number. The nine missing members of the Red Crescent team and the six missing members of the Civil Defence agency have families waiting for them.
- If this incident happened anywhere else, “the whole world would have moved heaven and earth to expose this war crime.”
- The Red Crescent contacted the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross to identify the exact location of the missing members.
- Unfortunately, they turned down “repeated requests” until two days ago, when OCHA managed to arrange for Red Crescent members to visit the site, where one body was recovered.
- The rescue team was not allowed to pass a barrier to establish whether the remaining crew members are alive.
- The missing team must have either been killed or detained by Israeli soldiers.
What we know about the rescuers who went missing near Rafah
- In the early hours of March 23, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) deployed an ambulance to the al-Hashaashin neighbourhood of Rafah to evacuate the wounded after Israeli forces bombed the area.
- The crew, however, came under Israeli fire, and PRCS deployed three more ambulances to evacuate the medics as well as other civilians.
- But Israeli soldiers besieged the area, resulting in the PRCS losing contact with all of the 10 medics it sent there. Israel later released one of the medics after severely assaulting him.
- The Palestinian Civil Defence also deployed a six-member team to Al-Hashasin at the same time, but said that it, too, lost contact with its crew.
- On March 27, Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency obtained satellite images, taken on the day the medics went missing, showing the Israeli military surrounding at least five vehicles belonging to the PRCS and the Civil Defence.
- Rescuers were finally able to reach the scene on Saturday and found the body of Civil Defence mission leader Anwar Abdel Hamid al-Attar “in dismembered pieces” as well as destroyed fire engines, and ambulances, including PRCS vehicles.
- The Israeli military acknowledged attacking ambulances and fire trucks, but claimed the vehicles had been used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and alleged that the Palestinians it killed were fighters.
10 more bodies of emergency responders discovered in Rafah
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has confirmed 11 more bodies have been found in southern Rafah city, with six identified as its members and four with the civil defence agency.
The eleventh body is being identified. The ambulance service said three of its medics and one civil defence responder remain missing. The teams were called for rescue efforts after Israeli attacks on the area eight days ago.
Number of health worker bodies recovered rises to 14: PRCS
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says it has now recovered the bodies of 14 Gaza health workers, including eight emergency medical technicians (EMTs). Five Civil Defense personnel and one UN employee were among the 14 bodies, PRCS said.
“Efforts are still ongoing to search for additional bodies,” it said.
