By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2025-04-01 17:35:09 | Updated at 2025-04-02 20:58:31
1 day ago
Israeli troops are being accused of killing 15 medics and aid workers from the Red Crescent and other relief groups and then burying them in a “mass grave” in Gaza, according to the United Nations.
The aid workers and their ambulances were found Monday in a hastily dug grave, which was apparently plowed over by bulldozers, the UN said.
The Israeli military said troops fired on the emergency vehicles after they began “advancing suspiciously” towards them.
Israeli officials initially said Israel Defense Forces soldiers had killed Hamas operatives in the attack, but none of the bodies recovered from the site appeared to be armed terrorists, according to the UN and Red Crescent.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society — which has previously been responsible for collecting freed hostages from Hamas and delivering them to Israel — accused the IDF of killing the medics “in cold blood.”
“They were killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives. We demand answers and justice,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said.
The dead include eight Red Crescent workers, six members of the Gaza Civil Defense emergency unit, and a staffer from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), according to officials from all three groups.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent said the incident was the “single most deadly” day for its staff in more than eight years.
The aid workers had been missing since March 23 after they left to respond to an Israeli strike in the southern city of Rafah, the UN said.
The Israeli military was carrying out an operation in Rafah and had issued evacuation orders, with officials claiming that Hamas has hid itself among ambulances before to attack IDF troops.
While the IDF first claimed that the attack on the ambulances killed a Hamas operative named Mohammed Amin Shobaki, along with eight other militants, it did not provide any evidence for the claim.
UN and Red Crescent officials say no one in the grave matches the name given by the Israeli military.
The IDF has not provided any other names for the alleged militants killed, nor has it said how the emergency workers and their vehicles came to be buried.
The UN and Red Crescent also accused the IDF of keeping their other aid workers away from the site where the emergency teams disappeared, with a convoy forced to turn back when it encountered troops firing at people last week.
Before turning back, the UN aid workers retrieved the body of one woman who was shot and left lying on the roadside, officials said.
The UN teams finally reached the site on Sunday, where the IDF informed them about the mass grave.
Footage from the recovery shows UN and Red Crescent workers digging out the mangled bodies, all of them wearing orange emergency vests.
“Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,” said Jonathan Whittall, with the U.N. humanitarian office (OCHA), speaking at the site in the video. “We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives.”
“It’s absolute horror what has happened here,” he added.
More than 1,000 health workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war campaign against Hamas terrorists 18 months ago, according to the UN.
With Post wires
