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UNITED NATIONS: The Israeli military backtracked on its account of the killing of 15 Palestinian medics by its forces last month after phone video appeared to contradict its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire on them in the Gaza Strip.
The military initially said it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on nearby troops without headlights or emergency signals. An Israeli military official, speaking late Saturday on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said that account was “mistaken.”
The footage shows the Red Crescent and Civil Defense teams driving slowly with their emergency vehicles’ lights flashing, logos visible, as they pulled up to help an ambulance that had come under fire earlier. The teams do not appear to be acting unusually or in a threatening manner as three medics emerge and head toward the stricken ambulance.
Their vehicles immediately come under a barrage of gunfire, which goes on for more than five minutes with brief pauses. The owner of the phone can be heard praying.
“Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose, mother, to help people,” he cries, his voice weak.
Eight Red Crescent personnel, six Civil Defense workers and a UN staffer were killed in the shooting before dawn on March 23 by Israeli troops conducting operations in Tel al-Sultan, a district of the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Troops then bulldozed over the bodies along with their mangled vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. UN and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later to dig out the bodies.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society's vice president, Marwan Jilani, said the phone with the footage was found in the pocket of one of its slain staffers. The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations distributed the video to the UN Security Council. The Associated Press obtained the video from a UN diplomat on condition of anonymity because it has not been made public.
One paramedic who survived, Munzer Abed, confirmed the veracity of the video to the AP. Two block-shaped concrete structures visible in the video are also seen in a UN video released Sunday showing the recovery of the bodies from the site — a sign they are in the same location.
Asked about the video, the Israeli military said Saturday that the incident was “under thorough examination.”
One medic remains missing
The head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Younes Al-Khatib, called for an independent investigation. “We don’t trust any of the army investigations,” he told a briefing at the UN on Friday.
One medic, Assaad al-Nassasra, is still missing, the Red Crescent says. Abed said he saw al-Nassasra being led away blindfolded by Israeli troops. Al-Khatib said the organization has asked the military where it is holding the staffer.
Al-Khatib said the slain men had been “targeted at close range” and that a forensic autopsy report would be released soon.
Israel has accused Hamas of moving and hiding its fighters inside ambulances and emergency vehicles, as well as in hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, arguing that justifies strikes on them. Medical personnel largely deny the accusations.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 150 emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Civil Defense, most of them while on duty, as well as over 1,000 health workers, according to the UN. The Israeli military rarely investigates such incidents.

Ambulances under a barrage of Israeli fire
Ambulances started heading to Tel al-Sultan at around 3:50 a.m. on March 23, responding to reports of wounded, Jilani said. The first ambulance returned safely with at least one casualty, he said. But, he said, subsequent ambulances came under fire.
His hands trembling, Abed told the AP on Saturday that as his ambulance entered the area, its siren lights were on. “All of a sudden, I am telling you, there was direct shooting at us,” so intense that the vehicle ground to a stop, he said.
A 10-year veteran of the Red Crescent, Abed said he was sitting in the back seat and ducked to the floor. He said he could hear nothing from his two colleagues in the front seat — the only others in the vehicle. They appear to have been killed instantly.
Israeli troops, some with night goggles, dragged Abed out of the ambulance and onto the ground, he said. They made him strip to his underwear, beat him all over his body with their rifle butts, then tied his hands behind his back, he said.
They interrogated him, asking him about his paramedic training and how many people were in the ambulance with him, he said. One soldier pressed the muzzle of his automatic rifle into his neck. Another pressed his knife blade into Abed’s palm, almost cutting it, until a third soldier pulled them away and warned Abed, “They’re crazy.”
Abed said he witnessed them opening fire on the next vehicles to arrive. Soldiers forced him onto his stomach and pressed a gun into his back, he said, and amid the shooting in the darkness, so he could only see two Civil Defense vehicles.
Video shows medic’s terror
The phone video shows a rescue convoy of Red Crescent and Civil Defense vehicles that was sent out after contact was lost with the stricken ambulance. Taken from the dashboard of one vehicle, it shows several ambulances and a fire truck moving down a road through a barren area in the darkness. The emergency lights on their roofs are flashing the entire way.
They arrive at an ambulance on the side of the road and stop next to it, their lights still flashing. No Israeli troops are visible.
“Lord, let them be OK,” a man in the car says. Then he cries out, “They’re tossed around on the ground!” — apparently referring to bodies. Three men in orange Civil Defense clothing can be seen getting out of the vehicles and walking toward the stopped ambulance.
A shot rings out and one of the men appears to fall. Gunfire erupts.
The man holding the phone appears to scramble out of the car and onto the ground, but the screen goes black, though the audio continues. The gunfire goes on for nearly five and a half minutes, with long, heavy barrages followed by silences punctuated by individual shots and shouts and screams.
Throughout, the man with the phone says over and over, “There is no God but God and Muhammad is God’s prophet” — the profession of faith that Muslims say when they fear they are about to die. Near the end of the six-minute, 40-second video, voices can be heard shouting in Hebrew. “The Jews are coming,” the man said, referring to Israeli soldiers, before the video cuts off.
The Israeli military official asserted there was “no mistreatment,” and said he didn’t know why the vehicles had been buried. He had no information about the medic who remained missing.

Israel claims they found militants afterward
The Israeli military says that after the shooting, troops determined they had killed a Hamas figure named Mohammed Amin Shobaki and eight other militants. However, none of the 15 slain medics has that name, and no other bodies are known to have been found at the site.
The military has not said what happened to Shobaki's body or released the names of the other alleged militants. The Israeli military official said Israel was “working to bring evidence” that Hamas operatives were killed.
Jonathan Whittall, interim head in Gaza of the UN humanitarian office OCHA, dismissed allegations that the slain medics were Hamas militants, saying staff had worked with the same medics previously in evacuating patients from hospitals and other tasks.
“These are paramedic crews that I personally have met before," he said. “They were buried in their uniforms with their gloves on. They were ready to save lives.”

TEL AVIV: Starvation was likely the leading cause of death for a Palestinian teenager who died in an Israeli prison, according to an Israeli doctor who observed the autopsy.
Seventeen-year-old Walid Ahmad, who had been held for six months without being charged, suffered from extreme malnutrition, and also showed signs of inflammation of the colon and scabies, said a report written by Dr. Daniel Solomon, who watched the autopsy, conducted by Israeli experts, at the request of the boy’s family.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Solomon’s report from the family. It did not conclude a cause of death, but said Ahmad was in a state of extreme weight loss and muscle wasting. It also noted that Ahmad had complained to the prison of inadequate food since at least December, citing reports from the prison medical clinic.
Ahmad died last month after collapsing in Megiddo Prison and striking his head, Palestinian officials said, citing eyewitness accounts from other prisoners. Israel’s prison service said a team was appointed to investigate Ahmad’s death and its findings would be sent to the authorized authorities.
Ahmad is the youngest Palestinian prisoner to die in an Israeli prison since the start of the Gaza war, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which has documented Palestinian prisoner deaths. He was taken into custody from his home in the occupied West Bank during a pre-dawn raid in September for allegedly throwing stones at soldiers, his family said.
The autopsy was conducted on March 27 at Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, which has not released a report of its findings and did not respond to requests for comment. The Ahmad family’s lawyer, Nadia Daqqa, confirmed Solomon, a gastrointestinal surgeon, was granted permission to observe the autopsy by an Israeli civil court.
Widespread abuse in Israeli prisons, rights groups say
Rights groups have documented widespread abuse in Israeli detention facilities holding thousands of Palestinians who were rounded up after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority says Israel is holding the bodies of 72 Palestinian prisoners who died in Israeli jails, including 61 who died since the beginning of the war. Israel often holds on to bodies of dead Palestinians, citing security grounds or for political leverage.
Conditions in Israeli prisons have worsened since the start of the war, former detainees have told the AP. They described beatings, severe overcrowding, insufficient medical care, scabies outbreaks and poor sanitary conditions.
Megiddo Prison, a maximum security facility where many Palestinian detainees, including teens, are held without charge, is regarded as one of the harshest, said Naji Abbas, head of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
Israel’s prison service said it operates according to the law and all prisoners are given basic rights.
Ahmad’s lawyer, Firas Al-Jabrini, said Israeli authorities denied his requests to visit his client in prison, but three prisoners held there told him Ahmad suffered from severe diarrhea, vomiting, headaches and dizziness before he died. They suspected it was caused by dirty water, as well as cheese and yogurt prison guards brought in the morning and that sat out all day while detainees were fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the lawyer said.
Malnourished and frail
According to Dr. Solomon’s report the autopsy showed that Ahmed likely suffered from inflammation of the large intestine, a condition known as colitis that can cause frequent diarrhea and can in some cases contribute to death.
But medical experts said colitis usually doesn’t cause death in young patients and was likely exacerbated by severe malnutrition.
“He suffered from starvation that led to severe malnutrition and in combination with untreated colitis that caused dehydration and electrolyte levels disturbances in his blood which can cause heart rate abnormalities and death,” said Dr. Lina Qasem Hassan, the head of the board for Physicians for Human Rights Israel who reviewed the report at the request of the AP.
She said the findings indicated medical neglect, exacerbated by Ahmad’s inability to fight disease or infection because of how malnourished and frail he was.
Dr. Arne Stray-Pedersen, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Oslo in Norway who was not involved in the autopsy, said the report suggests there was a period of prolonged malnutrition and sickness lasting at least a few weeks or months. “Based on the report, I interpret the underlying cause of death to be emaciation-wasting,” he said.
Scabies rashes were also noted on his legs and genital area, the report said. There was also air between his lungs that expanded into his neck and back, it said, which can cause infection. Air can come from small tears in the lungs, which can occur from severe vomiting or coughing, it said.
Ahmad’s family said he was a healthy high schooler who enjoyed playing soccer before he was taken into custody. His father, Khalid Ahmad, said his son sat through four brief court hearings by videoconference, and he noticed at one of them, in February, that his son appeared to be in poor health.
The family hasn’t yet received a death certificate from Israel, the elder Ahmad said Friday, and are hoping Dr. Solomon’s report will help bring his son’s body home.
“We will demand our son’s body for burial,” he said “What is happening in Israeli prisons is a real tragedy, as there is no value for life.”