Humanitarians work to recover the bodies of 15 first responders killed in their uniforms, who had been driving clearly marked vehicles, when they came under fire by Israeli forces on 23 March near Rafah, southern Gaza.
This article is published in association with United Nations.
UN humanitarians and partners on Tuesday expressed deep shock at the killing of 15 colleagues on duty in southern Gaza by Israeli forces whose remains were recovered on Sunday from a shallow grave after a week-long rescue operation, noting that one worker is still missing.
“This is a huge blow to us…These people were shot,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office, OCHA.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk issued a statement on Monday condemning the Israeli military’s attack, calling for an independent, prompt and thorough investigation into the apparently systematic killings.
“Normally we are not at a loss for words, and we are spokespeople, but sometimes we have difficulty finding them. This is one of those cases,”he told journalists in Geneva, referring to video footage taken near Tal-As-Sultan by an OCHA rescue party showing a crushed UN vehicle, ambulances and a fire truck that had been flattened and buried in the sand by the Israeli military.
Rafah mission
The clearly identified humanitarian workers from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Palestinian Civil Defence and the UN Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, had been despatched to collect injured people on 23 March in the Rafah area.
They came under fire from Israeli forces who were advancing in the area, OCHA’s top official in the Palestinian Occupied Territory said, in a detailed post on X.
Jonathan Whittall explained that on the day of the attack, five ambulances, a fire truck – and a UN vehicle which arrived following the initial assault – were all hit by Israeli fire, after which contact was lost with teams.
One survivor said Israeli forces had killed both of the crew in his ambulance, Mr. Whittall said. “For days, OCHA coordinated to reach the site but our access was only granted five days later…After hours of digging, we recovered one body – a civil defence worker beneath his fire truck.”
Bodies buried in the sand
The week-long rescue operation ended on Sunday 30 March with the recovery of the bodies of 15 humanitarian colleagues: eight from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six from the Palestinian Civil Defence (PCD) and the UNRWA worker.
The body of one more PRCS worker is still missing at the site, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which on Monday repeated its calls for information from the Israeli military.
Available information indicated that the first team had been killed by Israeli forces on 23 March; the other emergency and aid crews were struck one after another over several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues, OCHA said.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Türk said in his statement that the discovery of the bodies buried next to their “clearly destroyed” vehicles was “deeply disturbing”.
“This raises significant questions with regard to the conduct of the Israeli army during and in the aftermath of the incident,” he added.
The fate and whereabouts of the missing PRCS worker must be clarified, he stressed.
On Monday, UN relief chief Tom Fletcher demanded “answers and justice” from the Israeli military.
408 aid workers killed
According to UNRWA, 408 aid workers including more than 280 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza since the war began on 7 October 2023.
Additional video footage released by OCHA taken from within a UN vehicle near the site of last Sunday’s incident also showed two people walking and then running to escape sniper fire.
According to OCHA, a woman was shot in the back of the head and a young man trying to retrieve her was also shot. The OCHA team managed to recover her body in the UN vehicle.
Despite a demand for “answers and justice” from Israel by the UN’s emergency relief chief Tom Fletcher, no information has yet been provided, his office said.
“We keep engaging with the Israeli authorities daily on this and on other burning matters including, importantly, the critical need to reopen crossings for supplies,” said Mr. Laerke. “Because while this is a huge blow to us on all levels, the crisis itself, just moves on and gets worse every day.”
Atrocity crimes warning
The development comes days after the UN agency warned that acts of war in Gaza “bear the hallmarks of atrocity crimes”, with hundreds of children and other civilians killed in Israeli airstrikes in intensely populated areas and hospital patients “killed in their beds, ambulances shot at and first responders killed”.
James Elder, spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, condemned “unprecedented breaches” of international humanitarian law (IHL) in Gaza linked to the resumption of Israeli bombardment and ground operations inside the shattered enclave.
Every day since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel broke down on 18 March with heavy Israeli strikes, “100 children have been killed and maimed every single day since that moment”, Mr. Elder insisted.
Will-power alone will not help anyone survive “when we see breach after breach of IHL, breach after breach of restricting aid,” the UNICEF spokesperson continued, four weeks since the Israeli authorities shut Gaza’s borders to all commercial and humanitarian aid.
Echoing those concerns, IFRC’s Mr. Della Longa reported that hospitals “are literally overwhelmed” and running out of medicine and medical equipment.
The IFRC spokesperson also warned that a lack of fuel or damage have put “more than half” of ambulance teams of the Palestine Red Crescent out of action.
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