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EVIDENCE OF ‘EXECUTION-STYLE’ KILLINGS OF PALESTINIAN AID WORKERS
BY ISRAELI FORCES, DOCTOR SAYS  
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Malak A Tantesh in Gaza, Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem, and Julian
Borger
April 2, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Forensic consultant says multiple bullets were used from short
range in attack that has caused global outrage. Israel expanded aerial
and ground attacks in Gaza since ending the ceasefire. Benjamin
Netanyahu said it intends to divide up the territory _

Funerals held at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis for eight of the
Palestinian Red Crescent Society health workers shot dead by Israeli
forces., Photograph: APA Images/Rex // The Guardian

 

A forensic doctor who examined the bodies of some of the 15 paramedics
and Palestinian rescue workers shot dead by Israeli forces and buried
in a mass grave
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southern Gaza has said there is evidence of execution-style killing,
based on the “specific and intentional” location of shots at close
range.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the Palestinian Civil Defense
and UN employees were on a humanitarian mission to collect dead and
wounded civilians outside the southern city of Rafah on the morning of
23 March when they were killed and then buried in the sand by a
bulldozer alongside their flattened vehicles, according to the UN.

Israel has expanded its aerial and ground attacks in Gaza since ending
the ceasefire last month. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
said on Wednesday it intends to “divide up”
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territory.
 

The killing of the paramedics and rescue workers has triggered outrage
around the world and demands for accountability. On Wednesday, the UK
foreign secretary, David Lammy, said Gaza
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Earth for humanitarian workers.

“Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible
must be held accountable,” Lammy said
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Ahmad Dhaher, a forensic consultant who examined five of the dead at
Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after they had been exhumed, said all
of them had died from bullet wounds. “All cases had been shot with
multiple bullets, except for one, which could not be determined due to
the body being mutilated by animals like dogs, leaving it almost as
just a skeleton,” Dhaher told the Guardian.

“Preliminary analysis suggests they were executed, not from a
distant range, since the locations of the bullet wounds were specific
and intentional,” he said. “One observation is that the bullets
were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third
person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”

He emphasised that there was room for uncertainty due to the
decomposition of the remains, and that in other cases he reviewed
“most of the bullets targeted the joints, such as the shoulder,
elbow, ankle, or wrist”.

Two witnesses to the recovery of the bodies told the Guardian on
Tuesday that they had seen bodies the hands and legs of which had
been tied
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suggesting they had been detained before their deaths. A Red Crescent
spokesperson, Nebal Farsakh, said on Wednesday that one of the
paramedics “had his hands tied together with his legs to his
body”.
 

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View video here - Click here
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(or click on arrow in image)

Dhaher said there was no clear evidence of restraints on the five
bodies he examined. “I could not recognise any tying marks on their
hands due to the state of decomposition of the five cases I checked,
so I can’t be sure of it,” he said.

The Israel Defense Forces and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have
said IDF soldiers opened fire on the ambulances and rescue vehicles
because they were “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without
headlights or emergency signals”. Government officials claimed to
have killed a Hamas military operative they named as Mohammad Amin
Ibrahim Shubaki, and “eight other terrorists” from Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in the attack on 23 March.

However, Shubaki was not among the bodies recovered from the mass
grave outside Rafah on Saturday and Sunday, eight of which were
identified as Red Crescent ambulance workers, six as civil defence
rescue workers, and one as an employee of the UN relief agency Unrwa.
The IDF has not responded to questions about why the dead were buried
with their vehicles or to reports that some showed signs of having
been tied up.

The sole survivor from the shootings on 23 March, Munther Abed, a Red
Crescent volunteer, contradicted the official Israeli account, saying
the ambulances had been observing safety protocols when they were
attacked.

“During day and at night, it’s the same: external and internal
lights are on. Everything tells you it’s an ambulance that belongs
to the Palestinian Red Crescent. All the lights were on until we came
under direct fire,” Abed told The World at One
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denied that anyone from a militant group was in the ambulance.

Abed, who was in the first ambulance to come under fire in the early
morning of 23 March, said he survived because he threw himself to the
floor at the back of the vehicle when the shooting started. The two
paramedics in the front seats of the ambulance were killed in the hail
of Israeli gunfire. Abed was detained and interrogated by Israeli
soldiers before being released.

The other 13 victims were all in a five-vehicle convoy dispatched some
hours later to recover the bodies of the two dead ambulance workers.
All of them were shot dead and buried in the same grave.

A Guardian investigation published in February
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that more than 1,000 medical staff had been killed across Gaza from
the beginning of the conflict on 7 October 2023 – triggered by a
Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis – until
the beginning of a temporary ceasefire in January. Many hospitals have
been reduced to ruins in attacks that a UN Human Rights Council
commission concluded amounted to war crimes
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Since ending the two-month ceasefire last month, Israel has vowed to
step up its military campaign against Hamas. On Wednesday the defence
minister, Israel Katz, said that campaign was expanding to “seize
extensive territory” in the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu said Israel
intended to build a new security corridor as it was “dividing up the
Strip”.

Hospital officials in the occupied Palestinian territory said Israeli
strikes overnight and on Wednesday had killed at least 40 people,
nearly a dozen of them children.

_[MALAK A TANTESH is a reporter based in Gaza._

_LORENZO TONDO is a Guardian correspondent covering Italy and the
migration crisis. Twitter @lorenzo_tondo
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_JULIAN BORGER is the Guardian's senior international correspondent
based in London. He was previously a correspondent in the US, the
Middle East, eastern Europe and the Balkans. He is the author of two
books: I Seek A Kind Person and The Butcher's Trail. Click here
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Julian's public key]_

* war crimes
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