Slaying continues

The Israeli army has been forced to admit that it killed eight Palestinian Red Crescent medics, six civil defence first responders and a UN employee by firing on a convoy in Gaza on March 23. One paramedic survived and one is still missing.

Israel initially claimed the ambulances, a fire truck, and a UN car were driving without headlights and flashing lights and had approached its troops in the dark. This was disproven by seven minutes of recordings on a mobile phone of one of the slain medics that showed the opposite was true.

Red Crescent volunteer Muther Abed survived the attack by lying on the floor of the ambulance in which he was travelling as colleagues were shot. He told the BBC that the teams were on their way to collect wounded in Rafah city at dawn when they were attacked. He said, “During day and at night, it’s the same thing. External and internal lights are on. Everything tells you it’s an ambulance vehicle that belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent [PRC]. All lights were on until the vehicle came under direct fire.” He said he was arrested, blindfolded, and interrogated for 15 hours before being set free.

To cover up the mass murder the Israeli troops buried the bodies of the victims and vehicles in the sand and rejected calls from the UN and the PRC to enter the area. The remains were not found for a week. Once the bodies were unearthed, Israel claimed six of the medics were members of Hamas without offering evidence.

Gaza’s UN Palestinian agency (UNRWA) acting director Sam Rose told the BBC, “What we know is that fifteen people lost their lives, that they were buried in shallow graves in a sand berm in the middle of the road, treated with complete indignity and what would appear to be an infringement of international humanitarian law.” He called for a “complete investigation...to get to the bottom” of the incident. “Certainly, all ambulance workers, all medics, all humanitarian workers inside Gaza right now feel increasingly insecure, increasingly fragile,” Rose stated.

Humanitarian agencies have called for an independent investigation as Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem has repeatedly reported that Israeli internal military probes do not properly investigate the circumstances of Palestinian deaths by army actions.

The UN reports that 1,060 Palestinian health care workers have been killed since Oct.7, 2023, when Israel was attacked by Hamas which, Israel claimed, slew 1,200 and abducted 250.

The PRC has 3,987 staff, 13,413 volunteers, 150 ambulances, 39 branches, 15 hospitals, 33 health centres, and 40 rehabilitation centres in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the diaspora. While admitting mistakes were committed over the killings of the PRC workers, Israel did not take into account that the PRC is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Its secretary general Jagan Chapagain demanded in an interview with The Guardian, “Our dead colleagues were still wearing their Red Crescent vests. In life those uniforms signalled their status as humanitarian workers; they should have protected them. Instead, in death, those red vests became their shrouds.”

Israel has also failed to note that Palestinian journalists slain in Gaza are counted and listed by the global Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) which has said that Israel’s Gaza war has “taken an unprecedented toll” since Oct.7.

The CPJ said, “As of April 4, 2025, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 173 journalists and media workers – [165 Palestinians, two Israeli and six Lebanese] – were among the more than tens of thousands killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” The CPJ is investigating more than 130 additional cases of potential killings, arrests, and injuries” despite difficult conditions. The CPJ said 83 journalists were wounded, two reported missing, 75 arrested, and there have been “multiple assaults, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.”

The CPJ has found that of the fatalities, at least 13 journalists and two media workers were deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli forces and is conducting investigations in another 20 cases that could have involved direct targeting.

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the US put the Gaza fatality figure among journalists at 232, an average of 13 a week. Two more were killed after this toll was published. the Institute posted on X, “More journalists have died in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, than in both World Wars and other major wars, combined.”

The Israeli military denies it targets journalists but says it cannot guarantee their safety in a war zone. Nevertheless, the CPJ calls for an end to impunity in cases of journalists slain by the Israeli army.

New York-based CPJ Programme Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna stated, “Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price – their lives – for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth...Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”

The root cause of the high level of deaths among Palestinian medics, first responders, and journalists it the lack of accountability enjoyed by Israeli forces and politicians. B’Tselem argues, “Accountability for human rights violations is crucial to justice and the rule of law. Israel shirks this responsibility when it comes to its actions in the Occupied Territories, instead [of] putting in place systems which do no more than offer the semblance of law enforcement, in both criminal and civil law. Those responsible go unpunished and victims are denied compensation” and justice. B’Tselem argues the lack of accountability leads to the “lack of deterrence and oversight [enabling] human rights abuse [and] facilitates the continuation of the occupation.”

The battle against Israeli impunity has taken a very ugly turn in recent months. Activists engaged in this struggle have been silenced, arrested, imprisoned, and deported from the US and are being pursued in other Western countries.