by Kavitha Chekuru at Drop Site
In one of the deadliest attacks on emergency workers in the world in years, Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian first responders and buried them in a mass grave.
On March 30, the bodies of over a dozen Palestinian first responders were found in a mass grave in the southern city of Rafah. In a war already defined as one of the deadliest attacks on journalists and aid workers in history, the massacre sent shockwaves across Gaza. Rescue crews discovered the bodies of 13 Palestinian paramedics—eight from the Red Crescent and five from the Palestinian Civil Defense, tasked with protecting and assisting civilians—along with one United Nations staffer. The body of one Civil Defense worker had been discovered three days earlier, bringing the total number of emergency and aid workers killed to 15. One of the Red Crescent’s paramedics, Asaad Al-Nasasra, is still missing.
Amid what the United Nations has described as a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system,” the Red Cross and Red Crescent said it was the single deadliest attack on their workers anywhere in the world since 2017. Gaza’s Civil Defense, likewise, called it “one of the most heinous massacres” they have witnessed.
“We were directly and deliberately shot at,” Munther Abed, the only known surviving paramedic, said in an interview with Drop Site News. He said that their ambulance was clearly marked as a medical vehicle and had its lights on as further indication. “The car is clearly marked with ‘Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101.’ The car’s number was clear and the crews’ uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at? That is the question.”
In a video taken on March 30 by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the bodies are seen being excavated and placed into white body bags. “One by one, they were hit, they were struck,” Jonathan Whittall, an OCHA official, says from the site. “Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave.” He added that the grave was marked by the emergency light from an ambulance.
The medics were killed just a few days after Israel broke the ceasefire in Gaza on…
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