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palestine red crescent society
Investigation Details IDF's 'Execution-Style' Massacre of Gaza Medics
"What this investigation reveals is that there was a shoot first policy, and that is unlawful under international law," said one legal expert.
Feb 23, 2026
An investigation published Monday meticulously dissects last year's killing by Israeli soldiers of 15 Palestinian aid workers in southern Gaza and the Israel Defense Force's subsequent efforts to cover up the massacre, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society called "one of the darkest moments" of the US-backed genocide.
IDF soldiers fired nearly a thousand bullets—at least eight of them at point-blank range—during the March 23, 2025 attack on a convoy of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Palestinian Civil Defense ambulances and a PCD fire truck in Tel al-Sultan north of Rafah, according to the investigation by Forensic Architecture and Earshot.
"Our investigation confirms that Israeli forces attacked the aid workers while they were traveling in clearly marked humanitarian vehicles, in the absence of any threat or exchange of fire," a summary of the report states. "Spatial and audio analysis conducted in partnership with Earshot reveals the positions from which Israeli soldiers fired on the aid workers—in at least once instance within one to four meters of their victim—over a period of more than two hours."
Eyewitness and survivor testimonies and analysis of various recordings showed that some of the aid workers—who included eight PCRS workers, six PCD employees, and one staffer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. They are among the hundreds of Palestinian humanitarian aid workers killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, including more than 370 members of UNRWA, according to the agency.
The new report shows how IDF troops ambushed and attacked the convoy, firing on its vehicles. IDF spokesperson Col. Nadav Shoshani claimed that unmarked convoy vehicles "were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals" and that nine of the first responders were “terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad."
However, as is often the case, IDF officials could not support their claim with evidence, and video recorded by PRCS worker Refaat Radwan before he was killed shows clearly marked ambulances traveling with lights on and sirens wailing.
The IDF's lies poured fuel on the fire of international outrage over the massacre. Trey Yingst, chief international correspondent at staunchly pro-Israel Fox News, said that Israel's version of the massacre story was "clearly not true."
Gaza authorities previously reported that some of the victims had apparently survived the initial attack and were handcuffed and executed before being dumped together into a deep hole and buried along with their destroyed vehicles.
Survivors Munther Abed and Assad al-Nassasra testified "that Israeli soldiers opened fire on the rescue convoy as the aid workers exited their vehicles and approached the ambulance on foot," according to the new investigation.
"Asaad recalled crawling toward an ambulance where two colleagues—Muhammad Bahloul and Saleh Muammar—had taken shelter," the publication continues. "Muhammad had been killed, and Saleh was severely wounded. Muhammad al-Hila crawled up behind Asaad, and as the two men embraced, Muhammad was shot and killed."
Autopsies revealed that some of the slain aid workers were shot in the chest and head, with one doctor who examined the bodies calling the "specific and intentional location of shots at close range" indicative of an "execution-style" killing.
Of the bodies found in the mass grave of victims, “one was beheaded,” according to PRCS spokesperson Mahmoud Basal, who said that “the least harmed among them had at least 20 bullets fired at him."
Jonathan Whittall, who headed the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office in Palestine at the time, told Drop Site Monday that “following our discovery of the mass grave, the narrative from Israeli forces shifted multiple times; we were fed several versions of a blatant lie."
The IDF cover-up attempt was underway. The new investigation says that the IDF "deliberately concealed and disturbed evidence, and in the weeks after repeatedly mischaracterized the incident and denied any wrongdoing."
Meanwhile, survivor al-Nassasra was captured by Israeli troops and taken to the Sde Teiman military prison in Israel's Negev Desert, where he was jailed for 37 days and tortured during interrogations. Sde Teiman gained global infamy following reports of torture, rape, and murder of detainees. The IDF is investigating the deaths of at least 36 Palestinians at the lockup, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Israeli soldiers pulled Abed, the other survivor, from his ambulance, bound his hands, beat him, and detained him on the ground near where the other vehicles had been ambushed. Abed testified that he was stripped, beaten, threatened with death, and interrogated before being released later that same day.
Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Drop Site that the new investigation "presents a very compelling case, and honestly, a very devastating one.”
"What this investigation reveals is that there was a shoot first policy, and that is unlawful under international law," she continued.
“When you zoom out and look at this in the context of the way the Israeli assault has been carried out over many months and years in Gaza and we see that there is a pattern and practice of attacks on medical personnel—similar to journalists and other groups that are explicitly and uniquely protected as classes of civilians in international humanitarian law—it raises even more questions and deep concern about the lack of accountability, because what we know is that impunity breeds repetition," Gallagher added.
There has been no accountability for those who ordered, carried out, and tried to cover up the paramedic massacre, for the killers of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—most of them women and children—or for the countless victims of Israeli arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, and other thoroughly documented crimes.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, the Biden and Trump administrations have unwaveringly backed Israel's war, providing tens of billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic cover including vetoes of numerous UN Security Council cease-fire resolutions.
Adding insult to injury, the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation—whose aid sites have been called "death traps" where more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed—established a distribution center atop the mass grave where the massacred paramedics were buried.
“Now, the US, under the so-called Board of Peace, plans to build a ‘New Rafah’ over this crime scene," Whittall told Drop Site. "Without meaningful accountability, ‘New Rafah’ will be a monument to impunity.”
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Red Crescent Demands Investigation Into Israel Massacre of Gaza Paramedics
"International silence in the face of attacks on humanitarian teams not only equates to a death sentence for Palestinians in Gaza but also poses a direct threat to humanitarian work everywhere."
Apr 09, 2025
The Palestine Red Crescent Society is demanding an independent international investigation into what it called Israel's recent "deliberate killing" of 15 Palestinian first responders, including eight PRCS paramedics in southern Gaza, after video found on a phone buried with one of their bodies showed Israel lied about the incident and autopsies found that the men had been shot with "intent to kill."
"Accountability should not require video evidence. It should not take global outrage for the truth to be acknowledged," PRCS spokesperson Nebal Farsakh said in a video published Wednesday. This, after PRCS issued a statement Monday accusing Israel of a "massacre" and a "full-fledged war crime" that "reflects a dangerous pattern of repeated violation of international humanitarian law."
Citing the Geneva Conventions, PRCS called for "an independent international investigation and for all perpetrators to be held accountable," adding that "international silence in the face of attacks on humanitarian teams not only equates to a death sentence for Palestinians in Gaza but also poses a direct threat to humanitarian work everywhere."
On March 30, PRCS said it had recovered the bodies of 15 Palestinian first responders from a mass grave, including eight Red Crescent emergency medical team members, six Civil Defense personnel, and one United Nations worker. The first responders were killed by Israeli forces on March 23 while traveling "on duty" in five ambulances, a fire truck, and a U.N. vehicle in the al-Hashashin area of southern Gaza. One PRCS medic is still missing after apparently being taken prisoner by Israeli troops.
The Gaza Health Ministry said that "some of these bodies were bound and shot in the chest" before being "buried in a deep hole to prevent their identification." The vehicles in their convoy were destroyed and buried along with the victims in what officials said was an unsuccessful attempt to conceal the massacre.
PRCS spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Drop Site News that one of the victims was "beheaded," and that "the least harmed among them had at least 20 bullets fired at him."
Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Col. Nadav Shoshani claimed troops opened fire in response to unknown vehicles "advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals."
Shoshani further contended that nine of the first responders were "terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad"—an accusation often made by Israeli officials against many of the thousands of medical professionals, humanitarian workers, and journalists killed or wounded by the IDF.
However, video found on the cellphone of 23-year-old Rifaat Radwan, one of the slain medics, revealed that the ambulances and fire truck were not only clearly marked but also had their emergency lights flashing when they were attacked.
Israeli troops can be heard in the video firing on the convoy and getting closer. Realizing he was about to die, Radwan said: "Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose—to help people."
Speaking to Middle East Eye, Radwan's mother called the killing of her son and the other first responders "something horrific, beyond comprehension" and "a crime against humanity."
Radwan's video forced the IDF to admit that its version of events was "mistaken." British Tunisian journalist Soumaya Ghannoushi wrote that the slain medic's "voice from beyond the grave destroyed Israel's lie."
There was also the testimony of survivor Munther Abed, a 27-year-old longtime PRCS volunteer, who told Drop Site News that the first responders "were directly and deliberately shot at" by IDF troops.
"The car is clearly marked with 'Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101,'" he said. "The car's number was clear and the crews' uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at?"
🚨Report: The sole survivor of the paramedics Israeli massacre in Rafah, Munther Abed, recounts the moments when his colleagues were executed before his eyes and how he survived the Israeli attack that targeted Red Crescent and Civil Defense ambulances on March 23, killing 15… pic.twitter.com/3cvTDPOGJw
— Gaza Notifications (@gazanotice) April 3, 2025
Abed says he was kidnapped and tortured by IDF soldiers, and that he saw Assad al-Nassara, the missing medic, in Israeli custody.
"This is not the first violation and there have been many violations before," Abed said. "Where is our protection according to international humanitarian law?"
At least 30 PRCS workers and volunteers have been killed by Israeli forces since Israel launched the war in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. Such killings rarely make international headlines but sometimes do, like when two medics were fatally shot while trying to rescue Hind Rajab, a mortally wounded 6-year-old girl trapped in a car surrounded by dead relatives following an IDF attack in January 2024.
As Ghannoushi noted: "Palestinian medics say their uniforms don't protect them; they mark them for death. Symbols once sacred—the Red Crescent vest, the white coat, surgical scrubs—are now treated as targets."
"In Gaza, medicine is rebellion, and compassion is treason," she added. "To heal is to defy extermination."
The first responders' massacre has received widespread international media coverage, and even the staunchly pro-Zionist U.S. corporate media pressed Israeli officials for answers. Fox News chief foreign affairs correspondent Trey Yingst appeared skeptical of Israel's assertion that the slain first responders were terrorists: "Asked multiple times for evidence to support that claim, none was provided," he said during one report.
Jonathan Whittall, who heads the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Palestine, angrily rejected Israel's claim, saying the first responders were executed "one by one."
"We're digging them out with uniforms, with their gloves on," he said last week. "They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave."
Whittall called the killings "very emblematic of the point we've reached in Gaza."
"What is happening here is defying—it defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law," he added. "It is a war without limits."
The U.S.-backed war—for which Israel is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice—continued for the 551st day on Wednesday, with scores of Palestinians reportedly killed by IDF airstrikes and shelling across Gaza. A strike on a multistory residential building in the Shejaiyya neighborhood east of Gaza City killed at least 29 people including eight children, according to local medical officials. More than 60 others were wounded in the strike and two dozen other people are missing beneath the rubble.
The IDF—which after the October 7 attack explicitly allowed an unlimited number of civilians to be killed in strikes targeting even one Hamas member, no matter how lowly his rank—claimed it bombed the homes in a bid to eliminate a "senior Hamas terrorist."
The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that Israeli forces have killed 1,482 Palestinians in Gaza since unilaterally breaking a January cease-fire on March 18. This figure includes more than 320 children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. The ministry said that at least 50,846 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 115,700 have been wounded, since October 2023. Upward of 14,000 others are missing and feared dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed-out buildings.
Nearly all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced—often multiple times—and have suffered widespread and sometimes deadly
starvation and illness fueled by Israel's "complete siege" of the coastal enclave.
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'They Must Be Prosecuted': Video Found on Phone of Murdered Gaza Medic Refutes IDF Claims
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left."
Apr 05, 2025
A video presented to officials at the United Nations on Friday and first made public Saturday by the New York Times provides more evidence that the recent massacre of Palestinian medics in Gaza did not happen the way Israeli government claimed—the latest in a long line of deception when it comes to violence against civilians that have led to repeated accusations of war crimes.
The video, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was found on the phone of a paramedic found in a mass grave with a bullet in his head after being killed, along with seven other medics, by Israeli forces on March 23. The eight medics, buried in the shallow grave with the bodies riddled with bullets, were: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif. The video reportedly belonged to Radwan. A ninth medic, identified as Asaad Al-Nasasra, who was at the scene of the massacre, which took place near the southern city of Rafah, is still missing.
The PRCS said it presented the video—which refutes the explanation of the killings offered by Israeli officials—to members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
"They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives," Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said last week after the bodies were discovered. Some of the victims, according to Gaza officials, were found with handcuffs still on them and appeared to have been shot in the head, execution-style.
The Israeli military initially said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, but rather claimed they fired on "terrorists" who approached them in "suspicious vehicles." Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said the vehicles that the soldiers opened fire on were driving with their lights off and did not have clearance to be in the area. The video evidence directly contradicts the IDF's version of events.
As the Times reports:
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
In an interview with Drop Site News published Friday, the only known paramedic to survive the attack, Munther Abed, explained that he and his colleagues "were directly and deliberately shot at" by the IDF. "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."
The video's release sparked fresh outrage and demands for accountability on Saturday.
"The IDF denied access to the site for days; they sent in diggers to cover up the massacre and intentionally lied about it," said podcast producer Hamza M. Syed in reaction to the new revelations. "The entire leadership of the Israeli army is implicated in this unconscionable war crime. And they must be prosecuted."
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left," said journalist Ryan Grim of DropSite News.
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Israel Bombs More Gaza Schools, Killing Dozens, Including Many Women and Children
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," said one observer.
Apr 03, 2025
Israeli airstrikes targeted at least three more school shelters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others on a day when local officials said that more than 100 people were slain by occupation forces.
Gaza's Government Media Office said that at least 29 people—including 14 children and five women—were killed and over 100 others were wounded when at least four missiles struck the Dar al-Arqam school complex in the Tuffah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering after being forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled coastal enclave by Israel's 535-day assault.
Al Jazeera reported that "when terrified men, women, and children fled from one school building to another, the bombs followed them," and "when bystanders rushed to help, they too became victims."
A first responder from the Palestine Red Crescent Society—which is reeling from this week's discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of eight of its members, some of whom had allegedly been bound and executed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops—told Al Jazeera that "we were absolutely shocked by the scale of this massacre," whose victims were "mostly women and children."
Warning: Video contains graphic images of death.
Horrifying scenes following the Dar Al-Arqam School Massacre!#Gaza pic.twitter.com/xOvuq3Zztx
— Dr. Zain Al-Abbadi (@ZainAbbadi11) April 3, 2025
An official from Gaza's Civil Defense, five of whose members were also found in the mass grave on Sunday, said: "What's going on here is a wake-up call to the entire world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop immediately. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza. Our teams cannot perform their duties properly.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said that the death toll was likely to rise, as some survivors were critically injured.
Dozens of victims were reportedly trapped beneath rubble of Thursday's airstrikes, but they could not be rescued due to a lack of equipment.
The IDF claimed that "key Hamas terrorists" were targeted in a strike on what it called a "command center." Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian civilians it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
Israel also bombed the nearby al-Sabah school, killing four people, as well as the Fahd School in Gaza City, with three reported fatalities.
Some of the deadliest bombings in the war have been carried out against refugees sheltering in schools, many of them run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—at least 280 of whose staff members have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. More than 17,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Thursday's school bombings sparked worldwide outrage and calls to hold Israel accountable.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," Australian journalist, activist, and progressive politician Sophie McNeill wrote on social media. "We must sanction Israel now!"
There were other IDF massacres on Thursday, with local officials reporting that more than 100 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn. Al-Wahidi said more than 30 people were killed in strikes on homes in Gaza City's Shejaya neighborhood, citing records at al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that al-Ahli's emergency room "is overwhelmed with casualties and, as is so often the case over the past 18 months, the victims are Gaza's youngest."
Thursday's intensified airstrikes came as Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Local and international media reported that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families fled from the area, which Israel said it will seize as part of a new "security zone."
Human rights defenders around the world condemned U.S.-backed killing and mass displacement, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose bid to block some sAmerican arms sales to Israel was rejected by the Senate on Thursday—saying: "There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ethnic cleansing. It is illegal. It is a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced at least once, and the "complete siege" imposed by Israel has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
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'Every Atrocity Imaginable': Litany of Israeli War Crimes Continues
"Genocide, ecocide, mass infanticide, rape, sexual assault, torture, slavery, sniping children, bombing hospitals, executing aid workers," said one critic. "We are funding an endless nightmare and it should haunt us forever."
Mar 31, 2025
As Israel Defense Forces bombing continued to kill and maim large numbers of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip over the weekend and into Monday, the discovery of the bodies of medical workers who were apparently executed by their captors and the publication of several reports in which Israeli soldiers admit to torturing prisoners and using civilians as human shields have drawn renewed war crimes accusations and calls for accountability.
On Sunday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said it had recovered the bodies of 15 Palestinian first responders from a mass grave, including eight Red Crescent workers and six Civil Defense personnel, who were killed by Israeli forces on March 23 while traveling "on duty" in five ambulances, a fire truck, and a United Nations vehicle in the al-Hashashin area of southern Gaza.
Jonathan Whittall, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, said Sunday that the first responders were picked off "one by one."
"Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave," Whittall added. "We're digging them out with uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave."
The IFRC condemns the killing of eight Palestine Red Crescent Society medics in Gaza.We are heartbroken. These dedicated humanitarians, killed while responding to the wounded, should have been protected. We mourn their loss and stand with the Palestine Red Crescent.Full statement: bit.ly/427LXxp
[image or embed]
— IFRC (@ifrc.org) March 30, 2025 at 11:47 AM
The Gaza Health Ministry said that "some of these bodies were bound and shot in the chest" before being "buried in a deep hole to prevent their identification."
Accusing Israel of a "heinous crime," the ministry called on U.N. agencies "and relevant international bodies to conduct an urgent investigation into these crimes and hold the occupation accountable for committing them."
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said troops opened fire on the convoy because it was "advancing suspiciously" toward their position.
"Following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had 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," the spokesperson claimed.
Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian first responders, United Nations workers, journalists, and other civilians that it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a statement Sunday that it is "outraged" by the killings, which it called "the single most deadly attack on Red Cross Red Crescent workers anywhere in the world since 2017."
"After seven days of silence and having access denied to the area of Rafah where they were last seen, the bodies of ambulance officers Mostafa Khufaga, Saleh Muamer, and Ezzedine Shaath and first responder volunteers Mohammad Bahloul, Mohammed Al-Heila, Ashraf Abu Labda, Raed Al Sharif, and Rifatt Radwan were retrieved today," the statement noted. "Ambulance officer Assad Al-Nassasra is still missing."
Noting that at least 30 Red Crescent workers and volunteers have been killed by Israeli forces during the war, IFRC secretary general Jagan Chapagain said: "I am heartbroken. These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians. 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," Chapagain stressed. "These rules of international humanitarian law 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," he added. "Instead of another call on all parties to protect and respect humanitarians and civilians, I pose a question: When will this stop? All parties must stop the killing, and all humanitarians must be protected."
Journalist Mohammad Alsaafin compared the killings to last year's IDF massacre of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, five of her relatives, and two PRCS medics who rushed to the site of the attack in a doomed bid to rescue the wounded child after she called for help.
On Sunday, the British newspaper The Independent published an investigation into alleged Israeli torture of Palestinians detained at facilities including Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank and the notorious Sde Teiman base in the Negev Desert.
The report begins:
Handcuffed and cowering on the floor of a cell in a military base in southern Israel, the Palestinian found himself surrounded by five soldiers. Armed with dogs, the five reservists allegedly kicked, punched, and stamped on the man as he lay on the ground. Continuing their assault, they are accused of attacking him with Taser guns and sharp objects, sexually abusing him with these instruments. At one point, the soldiers allegedly stabbed him so hard that they pierced his buttocks and anus. The brutal alleged assault left the man hospitalized with a punctured lung, cracked ribs, and a tear in his rectum needing surgery for a stoma. He had not been charged with any crime.
The Independent noted details regarding some of the dozens of Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli custody. The IDF is currently conducting its own probe into the deaths of at least 36 Sde Teiman prisoners, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
"The fact that we see some signs of abuse means that this is probably the tip of the iceberg," said one Israeli physician who has overseen multiple autopsies on dead detainees.
In an anonymous testimony leaked to The Independent, one Sde Teiman guard described a prevailing attitude of "Yes, they need to be beaten, it must be done."
"We began looking for opportunities to do so," the soldier said, adding that when he spoke out against the beating of one detainee, he was told, "Shut up, you leftist, these are Gazans, these are terrorists, what's wrong with you?"
One former Sde Teiman detainee said that "every meter you moved, they beat you, they hit you, they insulted you; they used dogs, tear gas, and electric shock."
IDF troops and veterans who were posted at Sde Teiman have provided similar details about "Israel's Abu Ghraib," a reference to the U.S. torture prison outside Baghdad during the Iraq War. Israeli doctors and medics have described forced starvation and 24-hour shackling so severe that prisoners have had limbs amputated.
A number of Sde Teiman guards were arrested last year following the leak of a video allegedly showing them raping a Palestinian detainee. The arrests outraged far-right Israelis, a mob of whom stormed Sde Teiman in a failed bid to free the accused guards.
As The Independent noted, "Among those held in [Israeli] detention are many of Gaza's healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, and paramedics." Some of these prisoners have died in custody, including the renowned surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who may have been raped to death, according to Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
Earlier this month, an independent U.N. panel found that Israel has "systematically" used reproductive, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinian men, women, and children during the war.
The IDF has responded to these and other allegations by claiming it "operates in accordance with international law."
However, the International Criminal Court last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who ordered a "complete siege" of Gaza blamed for deadly starvation and disease there—for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case brought by South Africa.
Also on Sunday, Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, published a piece by an anonymous Israel soldier who said that "in Gaza, almost every IDF platoon keeps a human shield."
"We operate a sub-army of slaves," the soldier said, describing how innocent Palestinians are used to check buildings for Hamas fighters or booby traps before IDF troops enter.
"I recently saw that the IDF's Military Police Criminal Investigation Division opened six investigations into the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, and my jaw dropped," he wrote. "I've seen cover-ups before, but this is a new low."
Previous reporting has detailed the IDF's widespread use of Palestinian civilians—including children—as human shields in Gaza. The IDF even has a name for the practice—the "mosquito protocol." In one case, an 80-year-old man was used as a human shield before being shot dead by Israeli troops.
The IDF's thoroughly documented use of noncombatants as human shields stands in start contrast with mostly baseless claims of Hamas using Palestinian civilians in such a manner.
The new reports come as Israeli forces continued their assault on Gaza. Health and medical officials in Gaza said at least 41 Palestinians were killed in airstrikes throughout the strip on Monday, the second day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. This followed the killing of at least 64 Palestinians across Gaza on Sunday.
Approximately 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed its assault on the embattled coastal enclave on March 18, including hundreds of children. Israel's 542-day annihilation of Gaza has left more than 175,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing since October 7, 2023, when Hamas led the deadliest-ever attack on Israel.
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Israeli Snipers Firing at 'Anyone Who Is Moving' in Khan Younis
The southern Gaza city is the latest region where Israeli forces have issued an evacuation order, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Jul 25, 2024
At least 129 people have been killed in the last five days of Israeli shelling and artillery fire in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where the Israel Defense Forces earlier this week gave people "a couple of minutes only" to evacuate earlier this week, according to Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary, before the bombardment began.
Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that "the vast majority of dead and injured are women and children," as Israeli snipers have also been deployed in the city and are firing at Palestinians indiscriminately.
The snipers "are shooting anyone who is moving," wrote Tareq Abu Azzoum in a dispatch, reporting that the eastern part of Khan Younis is the main target of Israel's current assault.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) noted that the latest evacuation order reduced the area that Israel has claimed is a "humanitarian zone," as the order covered about 15% of al-Mawasi, where people from cities including Rafah and Gaza City have fled in recent months as the IDF has launched assaults in those cities.
The group told Al Jazeera that "there is no more space, even for a single tent, in the so-called 'humanitarian area' of al-Mawasi because of the overwhelming number of people displaced there."
Israel's reported indiscriminate assault on the city has included medical workers, said PRCS, which posted a video on social media Thursday of an ambulance that had been hit by live bullets fired by the IDF while medics were transporting an injured person.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor noted on Monday that the true death toll in Khan Younis—as with the rest of Gaza—may not be known for months, "with many victims remaining trapped under the rubble and in the streets, where rescue workers have not been able to retrieve their bodies."
The group also said the IDF had perpetrated "a kind of deception of the residents" of Khan Younis and villages in the area, including Bali Suhaila, where soldiers entered "amid very violent bombardment, even though the Israeli army had said in its orders that the displacement was going to be temporary."
The forced evacuation, false information about the order, and shrinking of the humanitarian zone were "all part of Israel's media disinformation campaign and psychological warfare tactics, since military assaults on forcibly displaced people and their tents have occurred continually in this area for several weeks now, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries," the Euro-Med Monitor.
The reports of indiscriminate shooting by snipers also bolster an account given by Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who volunteered at European Hospital in Khan Younis in April, to CBS News earlier this week.
"I had sniper bullets," said Perlmutter. "I have children that were shot twice... I have two children that I have photographs of, that were shot so perfectly in the chest... and directly on the side of the head on the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world's best sniper. And they're dead-center shots."
Perlmutter is among nearly four dozen doctors and nurses who wrote to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden on Thursday, describing what they saw while volunteering at hospitals across Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave and blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, including medications and medical supplies, nearly 10 months ago.
"Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict," wrote the medical workers. "However, every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest."
"We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget," they added. "We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen."
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Hind Rajab Killing: Analysis Finds Israeli Tank Fired 335 Bullets Into Car at Close Range
"It's not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children," an investigation of the five-year-old Palestinian girl's death found.
Jun 22, 2024
An Israeli tank or tanks likely fired the bullets that killed five-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab and six relatives as they sat in a car in northern Gaza in January, according to an analysis released Friday that adds to evidence of the Israeli military's role in an indiscriminate killing which galvanized anti-war protests around the world earlier this year.
A tank had to have been positioned between 13 and 23 meters from the family car when it fired the shots that killed Layan Hamada, Hind Rajab's 15-year-old cousin, and it's "not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children," wrote the authors of the analysis, which was completed by U.K. research agency Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, with Earshot, an NGO, and Al Jazeera journalists.
The investigators found 335 bullet holes on the body of the Kia Picanto the family was using.
An Israeli tank also likely killed the two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics who came to the scene, the analysis found. The new analysis refutes Israel's contention that its forces were not responsible for the killings, which caused an international outcry.
More amazing investigative journalism by my colleagues @ForensicArchi on the murder of #HindRajab by Israeli forces: "it is not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians". No UK media outlet has picked it up yet https://t.co/GLSpgVdKps
— Des Freedman (@lazebnic) June 22, 2024
On January 29, seven extended family members including the young Rajab tried to flee Gaza City by car. Rajab remained alive for at least three hours after the other six had been killed, and was on the phone with the PRCS, pleading for help. "I'm so scared, please come," she said, according to The Guardian.
Hamada, the 15 year old, had herself been on the phone with the PRCS when she was killed. A released audio recording of her final moments, in which she explains that a tank is next to the car and shooting at them, went viral.
⏺️Audio recording of the moment gunfire was directed at 15-year-old Layan Hamadeh while she was speaking on the phone with the Palestine Red Crescent team.
💔Layan was killed, and 6-year-old Hind remained trapped inside the car surrounded by the occupation tanks and soldiers.… pic.twitter.com/iMHGdoRcni
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 30, 2024
The bodies of the seven family members and two paramedics, whose vehicle was attacked nearby, were found 12 days later, on February 10.
The new analysis broadly fits with findings of an in-depth investigation of the family's killing conducted by The Washington Post in April, adding new details and strengthening the case that Israeli forces were culpable. Following the new release, Medhi Hasan, editor-in-chief of Zeteo News, argued that those who continue to support the killing of Palestinian children are sociopaths.
Columbia student protesters honored Rajab by naming an occupied academic building "Hind's Hall" in late April. Rajab was generally reported as having been six years old at the time of her death, but The Guardian issued a correction in May stating that she had been just five years old.
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'Unconscionable': WHO Accuses Israel of Obstructing Ambulances
"Healthcare, including ambulances, are protected under international law," said the World Health Organization. "They must be respected and protected in all circumstances."
Dec 12, 2023
The World Health Organization on Tuesday accused Israeli forces of delaying an aid and ambulance convoy and abusing medical personnel as they tried to transfer critically wounded patients to a hospital in southern Gaza, resulting in at least one death.
In a detailed account of what it called a "high-risk mission" conducted on December 9, the WHO said that as the emergency convoy made its way to Gaza's Al-Ahli Hospital to deliver medical supplies and pick up badly injured patients, it was inspected by Israeli forces at a checkpoint and crew members were forced to leave the vehicles.
Two members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), a humanitarian aid group that took part in the mission, were detained for more than an hour, the WHO said, noting that one staffer saw a PRCS worker "being made to kneel at gunpoint and then taken out of sight, where he was reportedly harassed, beaten, stripped, and searched."
When the convoy was finally permitted to advance to Gaza City, one of the aid trucks and an ambulance were hit by bullets.
WHO staff described the scene at Al-Ahli Hospital—one of the few medical facilities still operating in the strip—as "utter chaos and a humanitarian disaster zone."
As the convoy made its way back south with wounded patients, the convoy was stopped again at the same checkpoint, delaying care for critically wounded Palestinians who were searched by armed Israeli soldiers.
"One of the same two PRCS staff temporarily detained earlier on the way in was taken for interrogation a second time," the WHO said Tuesday. "The mission made numerous attempts to coordinate his release, but eventually—after more than two and a half hours—had to make the difficult decision to leave the highly dangerous area and proceed, for the safety and well-being of the patients and humanitarian workers."
According to PRCS, one of the patients aboard the convoy died from untreated wounds during the delay.
"Obstructing ambulances and attacks on humanitarian and health workers are unconscionable."
The WHO said December 9 was not the first time it was involved in an emergency operation that was held up by Israeli forces.
"On 18 November, six people from the Ministry of Health and PRCS were detained during a WHO-led mission to move patients from Al-Shifa Hospital," the WHO said Tuesday. "Four people—three from the Ministry of Health and one PRCS staff—are still in detention, more than three weeks later. There is no information on their well-being or whereabouts. This is unacceptable."
"Obstructing ambulances and attacks on humanitarian and health workers are unconscionable," the U.N. agency added. "Healthcare, including ambulances, are protected under international law. They must be respected and protected in all circumstances."
U.N. experts have condemned Israel's "unrelenting war" on Gaza's healthcare system, which is struggling to stay afloat amid the Israeli military's ongoing bombing campaign and blockade. Israel has bombed and fired on ambulance convoys and medical facilities in Gaza, killing patients and healthcare workers.
The WHO's representative for Gaza and the West Bank, Richard Peeperkorn, said during a press briefing on Tuesday that fewer than a dozen hospitals are still operating in the besieged strip as the number of people wounded by Israeli airstrikes continues to climb. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that between the afternoons of December 10 and 11, at least 416 people were injured in Gaza and 208 were killed.
"In just 66 days, the health system has gone from 36 functional hospitals to 11 partially functional hospitals—one in the north and 10 in the south," Peeperkorn said via videolink from Gaza. "We cannot afford to lose any healthcare facilities or hospitals. We hope, we plea, that this will not happen."
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Disease, Fueled by Blockade, Could Be Bigger Killer Than Bombs in Gaza: WHO
"Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system," said a spokesperson for the global health agency.
Nov 28, 2023
With the brief "humanitarian pause" between Israel and Hamas so far failing to result in the delivery of sufficient aid in Gaza, United Nations officials on Tuesday warned that the spread of disease could soon begin killing more Palestinian people than Israel's bombs and raids.
Humanitarian groups have warned for weeks that Israel's total blockade of Gaza—cutting off deliveries of fuel, water, food, and electricity access—quickly fueled outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses as sanitation and water treatment services ground to a halt.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has now recorded more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea and 70,000 acute respiratory infections in Gaza since Israel began its latest bombardment of the enclave on October 7, with cases of gastrointestinal illness for those aged five and older rising to more than 100 times the normal level earlier this month.
"Everybody everywhere has dire health needs now because they are starving, because they lack clean water and they're crowded together," said Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for WHO, at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. "Basically, if you're sick, if your child has diarrhea, if you've got a respiratory infection, you're not going to get any [help]."
"Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system," she added.
On social media, WHO reiterated its call for a permanent negotiated cease-fire and sustained aid access in Gaza to allow health officials to rebuild the decimated medical system.
Out of 36 hospitals in Gaza, about 26—or three-quarters—have entirely shut down due to damage from bombings and an inability to provide care to patients. Without fuel shipments and reliable electricity, doctors have been unable to run machinery needed to properly sterilize medical equipment, among other necessities.
Although the current truce has been in place for four days and was extended by two days on Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that no fuel has arrived in northern Gaza for hospitals to run generators.
One doctor from al-Shifa Hospital, which was raided by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier this month, told the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) that primary threats to children's safety were previously "very much from the air and now very much on the ground," as gastrointestinal and respiratory infections continue spreading.
"He was terrified as a medical professional in terms of the disease outbreak that is that is lurking here and how that will devastate children whose immune systems and lack of food…is making them perilously weak," UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said Tuesday.
At hospitals throughout Gaza, Elder said in a video briefing, "I met a lot of parents... They know exactly what their children need. They don't have access to safe water and it's crippling them."
Since last month, United Nations agencies and groups including Oxfam have warned that, cut off from access to clean water, Palestinians face an even more dire public health threat than the diseases that are already spreading: a potential cholera outbreak like the one that killed at least 97 people in 2022 in Syria and Lebanon.
"It's conceivable that the bacterium has been brought in and the conditions are now ripe for its spread," Richard Brennan, regional emergency director for WHO, told Al Jazeera in October.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) told the BBC Tuesday that about 200 aid trucks per day have been allowed into Gaza since the humanitarian pause began last week—an improvement over the roughly 45 trucks that entered the enclave each day before the truce, but only half the amount that brought aid to Gaza's 2.3 million residents daily before October 7.
"The situation has become more than dire and this aid is urgently and critically needed," PRCS spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told the BBC.
Amnesty International warned that Palestinian civil society groups are struggling to serve injured, ill, displaced, and traumatized residents as a number of European countries and the European Commission have suspended or restricted aid funding due to "unfounded allegations that funding has been diverted to 'terrorist organizations' or used for 'incitement to hatred and violence'."
The European Commission introduced "anti-incitement" clauses in all new contracts with Palestinian NGOs, subjecting them to third-party monitoring, even as it announced on November 21 that "no evidence has been found to date that money has been diverted for unintended purposes."
"Restricting the funding of Palestinian organizations only is discriminatory and would silence them by hampering their vital work and would further deprive victims of any prospect of protection," said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International's European Institutions Office.
"The credibility of European states who claim to champion human rights has already been already weakened by their failure to call for a cease-fire and by continuing to arm Israel as it kills thousands of Palestinians with impunity," added Geddie. "These discriminatory funding restrictions are damaging their credibility even further."
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Aid Group Calls for Safe Passage for Medical Missions as Gaza Hospital Conditions Worsen
"The humanitarian situation... continues to deteriorate rapidly and dramatically," the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.
Nov 13, 2023
As the humanitarian situation at hospitals in northern Gaza continues to deteriorate, the Palestine Red Crescent Society put out a call Monday to the international community, pleading with its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners and United Nations agencies to ensure safe passage for medical missions in Gaza, especially in the north.
The call comes after shelling prevented an attempt by PRCS and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send an evacuation team to al-Quds hospital, which has ceased to function entirely due to lack of fuel.
"The medical team, patients, and their families remain besieged in the hospital with no food, water, or electricity," the group wrote on social media.
PRCS said the convoy had left Khan Younis to reach al-Quds in Tel Al-Hawa, but was forced to turn back due to "relentless bombardment."
In its appeal statement, PRCS said that it was receiving hundreds of calls on the 101 emergency number from people in northern Gaza asking for ambulances to assist the wounded, retrieve the dead, or help them evacuate.
"A lot of phone calls received informed PRCS teams about a huge number of people stuck under the rubble, and tens of injured who need emergency medical care," the group wrote.
PRCS said that the Israeli army prevented ambulances from traveling in the north, and would target anyone who tried to move, meaning people were forced to abandon bodies in the streets.
"The humanitarian situation [in] Gaza and the northern governorates of the strip continues to deteriorate rapidly and dramatically," PRCS said. "Civilians in these areas are left behind, without emergency medical services due to the inability of ambulances to reach the injured."
The PRCS also said that any ambulances would have no hospitals to transport the injured to, since they were all either "besieged or out of service."
In response to the news that the convoy to al-Quds had to turn back, the U.N. Human Rights Office in Palestine also said there was an "urgent need for humanitarian access to northern Gaza and Gaza City." The office called for hospitals and their staff and patients to be protected.
Another struggling hospital in Gaza's north is al-Shifa Hospital, where staff continue to report harrowing conditions amid an ongoing siege by Israeli military.
"We don't have electricity," a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told the humanitarian group via phone on Monday. "There's no water in the hospital. There's no food. People will die in a few hours without functioning ventilators."
Over the weekend, hospital staff had to remove 39 premature babies from incubators due to lack of electricity and place them together in a bed. Since then, three have died, pediatrics head Dr. Mohamed Tabasha told Reuters Monday.
"The situation is very bad, it is inhuman."
"Yesterday I had 39 babies and today they have become 36," Tabasha said. "I cannot say how long they can last. I can lose another two babies today, or in an hour."
Tabasha said that fuel shortages also meant it wasn't possible to maintain the proper temperature for the infants, and that the hospital had no way to sterilize their milk or bottle teats. Because of this, some of the infants had become infected with gastritis, putting them at risk of dehydration.
"Unfortunately, this situation means that we are waiting for them to die one by one," Ahmad Mukhallati, who leads al-Shifa's plastic surgery department, told Middle East Eye on Monday.
The hospital is under siege by the Israeli military because it claims that Hamas operates a command center from the hospital and underground, The Associated Press reported. Both Hamas and the hospital staff deny this, and Israel has not supplied any evidence. It is considered a war crime to target a hospital.
The MSF surgeon said that the staff there would only evacuate if they received a guarantee that their patients, including the premature babies, would be evacuated safely first.
Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza, told AP that there were around 650 patients, 500 staff, and 2,500 displaced people still inside the hospital.
The MSF surgeon said that Israeli forces had bombed or shot at people who had attempted to leave the hospital, and also prevented hospital staff from bringing the injured in.
"When we sent the ambulance to bring the patients, a few meters away, they attacked the ambulance. There are injured people around the hospital, they are looking for medical care, we can't bring them inside," the surgeon said. "There's also a sniper who attacked patients, they have gunshot wounds, we operated on three of them. The situation is very bad, it is inhuman."
The Israeli military presence also means that staff have not been able to retrieve or bury the bodies of the dead outside the hospital.
Health ministry official Munir al-Bursh choked up while speaking to Al Jazeera Monday as he described seeing stray dogs eat the bodies left in the hospital's courtyard and being unable to stop them.
The European Union's humanitarian aid chief called for "meaningful" pauses in the fighting Monday so that fuel could be delivered to hospitals, as Agence France-Presse reported.
"First of all, they have to be announced well in advance of the implementation so organizations can prepare to exploit them. Second, they have to be clearly defined time-wise," Janez Lenarcic, European commissioner for crisis management, said during a meeting in Brussels.
So far, at least 1,200 Israelis and more than 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory bombardment and invasion of Gaza. Gaza's Health Ministry said that 32 patients had died at al-Shifa since it lost fuel on Saturday, according to AP.
On Sunday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus put out a call for an immediate cease-fire in response to conditions at al-Shifa.
"The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair," Tedros said on social media.
In response to growing calls for a cease-fire from humanitarian organizations and civil society, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu and U.S. President Joe Biden have refused.
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