Crowds gather in Khan Younis for funeral of Red Crescent workers
Large crowds have gathered in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis to pay respects to the 15 emergency workers killed by Israeli forces during a rescue mission last week in Rafah.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has condemned the killing of the first responders, whose bodies were uncovered on Sunday, as a “war crime”.
Footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency shows a gathering in Khan Younis honouring some of the slain emergency workers, whose bodies are wrapped in white shrouds bearing the Red Crescent logo.
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Video shows rescuers recovering bodies of aid workers in Rafah
The footage, by the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA), shows members of the PRCS and the Palestinian Civil Defence excavating a mass grave in Tal as-Sultan in Gaza’s Rafah governorate.
As we’ve been reporting, rescuers found 14 bodies on Sunday, taking the total number of bodies recovered to 15. The footage from OCHA shows rescuers recovering the bodies buried beneath the sand, next to the mangled remains of their clearly marked emergency vehicles, including ambulances, a fire truck, and a UN-labeled car.
“Seven days ago, Civil Defence and PRCS ambulances arrived at the scene. One by one, they were hit, they were struck. Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,” Jonathan Whittall, head of OCHA in Palestine, says in the video.
“We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave. Their vehicles, their ambulances, UN vehicles, civil defence vehicles are crushed and dumped, covered in sand next to us. It’s absolute horror what has happened here. This should never happen. Healthcare workers should never be a target.”
UN staff recounts Israeli attack on fleeing civilians in Gaza
In a post on X, the UN staffer described seeing Israel fire on fleeing civilians as he and others travelled to south Gaza to look for the missing medics that Israeli forces killed in Rafah.
“While traveling to the area on the fifth day we encountered hundreds of civilians fleeing under gunfire,” Whitall wrote. “We witnessed a woman shot in the back of the head. When a young man tried to retrieve her, he too was shot. We were able to recover her body using our UN vehicle.”
He also posted a video of the shootings, showing at least two people falling to the ground amid the sound of gunfire. “Another one shot, another one shot, another one shot,” one person is heard saying.
‘Shocking event’: Israel’s defence for killing emergency workers weak
Jeffrey Nice, a human rights lawyer who led the prosecution of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, has told Al Jazeera from Canterbury in the UK that the killing of 15 emergency workers by Israel was a “shocking event”.
He said the defence offered by Israel that it was a “case of ambulances and fire trucks being used to camouflage Hamas fighters” is a very “bare assertion” given that it seems clear that the vehicles were marked with the Palestine Red Crescent logo, and the personnel wore clothes “that identified them as such”.
“Not only do people working in humanitarian aid enjoy the protection that all civilians in conflict enjoy, but they are further specially protected because it is a crime if they are authorised personnel … to attack them,” he said.
Israel “has an obligation not to open fire under any circumstances where civilians may be involved, unless it could show that the likely outcome is proportionate in terms of military advantage gained, as opposed [to] civilian casualties lost, and that doesn’t seem to have been addressed in this case, and rarely is”, Nice said.
Photo shows rescue operations to recover the bodies of 15 aid workers, in southern Rafah, on March 27
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/31/middleeast/aid-workers-found-gaza-mass-grave-intl-hnk/index.html
