Rescue workers Israel killed found in mass grave in Gaza: What to know

Al Jazeera

01-04-2025

Nine Palestine Red Crescent (PRCS) medics in ambulances, as well as some Civil Defence workers, went to help people in Rafah, Gaza, and disappeared on March 23 after coming under attack from Israeli forces.
What followed was a week of Israeli obstruction until international teams were finally able to enter the area where the medics and rescue workers disappeared.
They found gruesome proof of direct attacks on the humanitarian workers. One medic remains missing.
Here's everything we know about how Israel killed these first responders in Gaza:
Israeli forces killed them.
One ambulance was dispatched to al-Hashaashin, Rafah, to help people injured by Israeli attacks on Sunday, March 23. Israeli soldiers fired on it, injuring the crew.
'In the early hours of Sunday, 23 March, our Palestine Red Crescent colleagues were entering the area of al-Hashaashin, Rafah to save lives and came under fire,' Tommaso Della Longa, spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told Al Jazeera.
The PRCS then sent a further three ambulances to help the injured people their colleagues were trying to reach, and to rescue their colleagues who had been attacked.
All the teams dispatched to support the initial ambulance did so during daylight hours, the Civil Defence confirmed.
PRCS 'lost contact with their colleagues', Della Longa said, and began trying to find them.There were three ambulance officers – who transport the wounded and offer emergency healthcare at times: Ezzedine Shaath, Mostafa Khafaga and Saleh Muamer.
There were also five first responder volunteers: Ashraf Abu Labda, Mohammad Bahloul, Mohammed al-Heila, Raed al-Sharif and Rifatt Radwan.
Ambulance officer Assad al-Nassasra is still missing. 'We don't know where he is,' Della Longa said.
'The colleagues that were killed and found left behind more than 20 children,' he added.
Israel has killed 30 Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers and staff – humanitarian workers protected by international humanitarian law – since October 7.
The bodies of 14 murdered people were found in a shallow mass grave, according to the PRCS.
Eight were identified as PRCS medics, five were Civil Defense workers, and one was a UN agency employee.
They were killed 'one after another', then buried in the sand along with their emergency vehicles, the UN said.
'The available information indicates that the first team was killed by Israeli forces on 23 March, and that other emergency and aid crews were struck one after another over several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues,' a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Palestine said.
'Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,' OCHA head Jonathan Whittall said from the scene.
'We're digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives,' he said.
'These ambulances have been buried in the sand. There's a UN vehicle here, …[an] Israeli forces bulldozer has buried them.'
The Israeli army's international spokesperson, Nadav Shoshani, said the medics had not been killed deliberately.
Referring to Israeli soldiers firing at clearly marked ambulances and UN vehicles, Shoshani wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that 'several uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals', not clarifying what was meant by 'uncoordinated vehicle'.
Shoshani also claimed without evidence that 'terrorists' were hidden amid the rescue workers and that '[Israeli] forces eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who took part in the October 7 massacre, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.'
None of the names reported as having been recovered from the mass grave match the name Shoshani claimed.
Soshani did not explain the fact that one body was recovered with his hands bound, according to the Red Crescent in Gaza, and that Israeli bulldozers had tried to bury the vehicles after the fact.
Israeli claims of Hamas launching attacks from medical facilities in Gaza were often 'vague' and sometimes 'contradicted by publicly available information', UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, told the United Nations Security Council in January.Della Longa said that, for a whole week, the IFRC, PRCS, ICRC and the UN made appeals to Israeli authorities to enter the area to investigate.
Israel blocked the requests until finally a mission was able to enter and look for the missing rescue workers.
Video from the scene showed searchers digging out several bodies wearing orange emergency vests, some piled on top of each other.
One body in a Civil Defence vest was pulled out of the grave only for searchers to realise it was a torso with no legs.
IFRC Secretary-General Jagan Chapagain said in a statement: 'These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people… They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked. They should have returned to their families; they did not.
'Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules [that] could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected.
'Our network is in mourning, but this is not enough… I pose a question: 'When will this stop?' All parties must stop the killing, and all humanitarians must be protected.'
Della Longa pointed out that half the ambulances in Gaza are no longer functional, either due to sustaining damage or because of the lack of fuel.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said in a post on X that the first responders 'were killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives. We demand answers & justice.'
US State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters the US expected 'all parties' to comply with international humanitarian law, without clarifying which account of the killings, Israel's or the UN's, she was referring to.
Amnesty International's Mohamed Duar, spokesperson for the occupied Palestinian territory, said: 'Despite their protected status under the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law, Israeli Forces continue to target healthcare workers… Ambulances and hospitals continue to come under fire and be destroyed.'
'There is no respect for humanitarians,' Della Longa told Al Jazeera. Violence is 'not new in Gaza, but the scale and severity of what we see is shocking, horrific and not acceptable'.
'There is a deterioration of respect for international rules,' he said. 'That should not and must not happen.'