Video footage shatters Israel’s claim of Palestinian paramedics killed in Rafah

A video footage recovered from a mobile phone of a Palestine paramedic, who was killed among 14 others in Gaza last month, contradicts IDF's version of the events that night. 

 

In the seven-minute video recovered by Palestine Red Crescent Society on Saturday from Rifat Radwan's phone, the medic who was killed, appeared to be taken from a moving vehicle. 

 

The video shows ambulances driving at night using headlights and flashing emergency lights. Later, the footage shows that the vehicle stops beside another that has driven off the road. Two men stepped out of the vehicle to take a look at the stopped vehicle and then the gunfire erupted.

 

Later, reportedly, the medic was heard saying, "Forgive me mother because I chose this way, the way of helping people...Accept my martyrdom, God, and forgive me...The Jews are coming (in an apparent reference to Israeli soldiers."   

 

The IDF had said that its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances and insisted that the shots were fired on "terrorists" approaching the "suspicious vehicles". 

 

The military spokesperson said that the troops fired on vehicles that had no prior clearance to enter the area and were driving with the lights off. 

 

"All claims, including the documentation circulated about the incident will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the...handling of the situation," IDF said on Saturday. 

 

In the incident in Rafah on March 23, 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers including one UN employee were killed. The Red Crescent and UN accused the Israeli forces of killing aid workers. 

 

The bodies, buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza, were found by the Red Crescent and the UN. An official said that there was evidence that at least one person was detained and killed as his hands were found to be tied. 

 

PRCS said that the convoy was dispatched in response to emergency calls from civilians trapped following Israeli strikes in Rafah.

 

Hamas in a statement said that “irrefutable visual evidence shatters the occupation’s fabricated ‘suspicious movement’ lies, proving systematic targeting of humanitarian personnel and constituting a premeditated murder under international law”.

 

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, also condemned the attack, raising concerns over possible “war crimes” by the Israeli military.

Middle East