Video shows last minutes before Gaza aid workers' deaths, Red Crescent says
A video recovered from the cellphone of an aid worker killed in Gaza alongside other rescuers shows their final moments, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, with clearly marked ambulances and emergency lights flashing as heavy gunfire erupts.
The aid worker was among 15 humanitarian personnel killed on March 23 in an attack by Israeli forces, according to the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The Israeli military has said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, insisting they fired on "terrorists" approaching them in "suspicious vehicles".
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said that troops opened fire on vehicles that had no prior clearance from Israeli authorities and had their lights off.
But the footage released by the Red Crescent on Saturday appears to contradict the Israeli military's initial claims, showing ambulances traveling with their headlights on and emergency lights flashing.
The six minute 42 second video, apparently filmed from inside a moving vehicle, captures a red firetruck and ambulances driving through the night amid constant automatic gunfire.
The vehicles stop beside another on the roadside, and two uniformed men get out.
In the video, the voices of two medics are heard — one saying "the vehicle, the vehicle", and another responding: "It seems to be an accident."
Seconds later a volley of gunfire breaks out and the screen goes black.
The Red Crescent said it had found the video on the phone of Rifat Radwan, one of the aid workers killed.
"This video unequivocally refutes the occupation's claims that Israeli forces did not randomly target ambulances, and that some vehicles had approached suspiciously without lights or emergency markings," it said in a statement.
Red Crescent spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told journalists that Israeli soldiers had "opened fire frantically and hysterically" at the medics.
"We then clearly heard the soldiers speaking Hebrew," Farsakh said, adding that the fate of one medic, identified only as Assad, remained unknown.
"We believe he has been arrested."
An Israeli military official told journalists late on Saturday that there were two incidents in the early hours of March 23.
The first occurred at 4:00 am when troops fired at a vehicle carrying members of Hamas internal security force, killing two and detaining one, he said on condition of anonymity.
The second occurred two hours later.
"At 6:00 am they received a report from the aerial coverage that there is a convoy moving in the dark in a suspicious way towards them," he said.
The soldiers who were in the area felt that it was a similar incident to the earlier one, the official said.
"They opened fire from far. What we see from surveillance, we see them shooting from a distance," he said.
"There were no handcuffs, no firing from a close distance. ... The forces are not trying to hide anything. They thought they had an encounter with terrorists."
Those killed included eight Red Crescent staff, six members of the Gaza civil defense agency and one employee of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
The bodies were found buried near Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah in what the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described as a mass grave.
Hamas accused Israeli forces of a "deliberate attempt to cover up the crime by burying the victims in mass graves and concealing the truth".
OCHA has said that the first team was targeted by Israeli forces at dawn on March 23. In the hours that followed, additional rescue and aid teams searching for their colleagues were also struck in a series of attacks.
In the video, a medic recording the scene can be heard reciting the Islamic profession of faith, the shahada, which Muslims traditionally say in the face of death.
"There is no God but God, Mohammed is his messenger," he says repeatedly, his voice trembling with fear as intense gunfire continues in the background.
He is also heard saying: "Forgive me mother because I chose this way, the way of helping people."
Just before the footage ends, he is heard saying "The Jews are coming, the Jews are coming," referring to Israeli soldiers.
Seconds later, a male voice is heard speaking in Hebrew without a foreign accent. "Wait, we're coming. We're not responsible — you are responsible," the voice says.
The identity of the speaker and who he is addressing are unclear.
The deaths of the aid workers sparked international condemnation.
Jonathan Whittall, the head of OCHA in the Palestinian territories, said the bodies of the humanitarian workers were "in their uniforms, still wearing gloves" when they were found.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said the attack raised concerns about possible "war crimes."
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