New evidence suggests that some of the 15 Palestinian aid workers killed by Israeli forces in Rafah last week were shot at close range in what appeared to be execution-style killings – an attack the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has described as “one of the darkest moments” of the war.
Forensic analyst Ahmad Dhaher, who personally examined five of the bodies at Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, said the evidence pointed to close-range gunfire.
“Preliminary analysis suggests they were executed, not from a distant range, since the locations of the bullet wounds were specific and intentional,” Dhaher told The Guardian newspaper.
“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 cautioned that the state of decomposition made it difficult to draw definitive conclusions.
The aid workers disappeared on March 23 during a rescue mission in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood after it came under attack by Israeli forces. The group included nine PRCS medics, six civil defence workers and one United Nations employee.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), after the first rescue team was killed, other emergency crews searching for them were repeatedly struck over several hours.
A week later, 15 bodies were discovered buried in the sand, which OCHA described as a “mass grave.” One PRCS worker remains missing.
This is “one of the darkest moments in this conflict that has shaken our shared humanity to its core,” PRCS President Younes al-Khatib told the UN Security Council on Thursday.
Al-Khatib also said PRCS dispatchers overheard a conversation in Hebrew between Israeli forces and some of the aid workers, indicating that at least some were still alive while in Israeli custody.
Israel’s military claimed that nine Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters were inside the rescue crews’ ambulances but said it was launching an investigation into the incident.
“The presence of those terrorists puts everyone’s lives at risk,” claimed Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
Humanitarian workers have been repeatedly targeted during the Gaza war, with 408 killed so far, including 280 UN staff, according to the UN.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said the aid workers’ killing raises “further concerns over the commission of war crimes by the Israeli military”.
Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting in New York, Turk called for an “independent, prompt and thorough investigation” into their killing.
“There is clearly growing consensus within the council that it must do more to hold Israel accountable,” reports Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo from the UN headquarters in New York.
