“I heard them doing the last breath”: Survivor tells Gaza Paramedic Killings | Israel-Gaza war

A survived from A Palestinian paramedics massacre And the rescue workers in Gaza said they had seen Israeli troops open fire on a succession of red crescent ambulances and rescue vehicles and therefore use a bulldozer to bury the wreck in a pit.

Munther Abed, a 27 -year -old Crescent Red volunteer, was on the back of the first ambulance to arrive on the scene of an air attack in the Hashashin district of Rafah before dawn on March 23, when he arrived under an intense Israeli fire. His two colleagues of Crescent Red sitting in the front were killed but survived by throwing themselves on the vehicle floor.

“The door opened, and here they are there: Israeli special forces in military uniforms, armed with rifles, green laser and night glasses,” Abed said to The Guardian. “They dragged me out of the ambulance, keeping me face down to avoid seeing what happened to my colleagues.”

He was beaten, detained with his hands tied and made to lie on the ground, from where he was able to see some of what happened while other friends and colleagues arrived on the scene in ambulances and fire trucks, each who ran in a hailbed of shots. Overall, eight members of the crew of ambulance Red Crescent street vendors were killed, six rescue workers of the Civil Protection and an employee of the United Nations. Their bodies were found next to their crushed vehicles last weekend in a sandy hole that Abed saw the troops dig. Other witnesses told The Guardian that some of the dead he had had his hands or feet tied.

A red crescent ambulance officer, Assad al-Nassara, remains not accounted for, but Abed said he saw him alive and in Israeli detention near the killings. Since then Nassara has not been seen. So far Abed is the only one to come back to life and tell his story.

He volunteered on March 23 at the Ambulanza station at the British Field Hospital in Al-Mawasi, a coastal field for displaced people, when the call arrived shortly after 4 in the morning from the dispatcher of the Hashashin emergency services, on the outskirts of Rafah. Abed jumped on the back of an ambulance that he immediately left. Her friend, Mostafa Khufaga, was driving, with another ambulance officer, Ezzedine Shaath, next to him.

Under the international pressure, the defense forces of Israel (IDF) said on Thursday that they were launching a formal investigation into the shootings. Until now, however, the IDF has denied any illicit, claiming to have shot on the vehicles “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals. Abed said the story was clearly false.

“The ambulance lights were clearly on and the Crescent Red logo was visible while we headed on the scene,” he said. The IDF described the area as a war zone, but Abed said that Hashashin was “a civil area in which daily life had occurred as usual, not a designated combat area”.

They had almost reached the air attack site reported at 4.20 in the morning, when they set up on fire.

“From the moment the filming began, I immediately developed the ambulance floor. I did not hear anything from my colleagues, except the sounds of their last moments, feeling them made last breath,” he said. “Suddenly, everything went silent, the ambulance stopped and the lights went out. The side door of the driver opened and I heard rumors speak in Hebrew. Fear and panic passed me and I started reciting some quotes from the Koran.

“I was completely stripped, left alone in underwear and my hands were linked behind the back,” said Abed. “They threw me to the ground and the interrogation began. I endured a strong torture, including beats, insults, threats of death and suffocation when a soldier pressed a rifle against my neck. Another soldier kept me a dagger on his left shoulder. After a while, an officer arrived and ordered the soldiers to stop, calling them crazy.”

An elderly man and his son who had gone to fish before dawn were also prisoners and tied and made to lie on the ground next to Abed.

“During this period, I noticed a vehicle of civil defense and another ambulance that approached. While approaching, both were welcomed with intense shots by the Israeli forces who lasted for about five minutes. After the shooting stopped, I have not seen anyone leave the vehicles,” he said.

“About five minutes later, two ambulances arrived from the direction of Rafah on the road that led to the Red Crescent Ambulance Center. I was able to see only the red lights of the ambulances and hear the sound of the shots. Another five minutes passed and a third ambulance came from the direction of Khan Younis, the same direction, the direction we had come from. We had come close to our vehicle and was shot like the others.

“When the sun started to climb around 6 in the morning, the landscape around us became clearer,” Abed said. “Carri, quadricott with drones and drones arrive. The area was completely surrounded and a large Israeli bulldozer and an excavator arrived. They began to dig a huge hole and threw inside the ambulances and the vehicle of civil defense, buried them and covering the hole.

“As for my colleagues, I don’t know their destiny. I only saw Asaad, but I am sure that the others were killed immediately after being affected,” he said.

The Bodies of Abed’s Colleagues, Khufaga and Shaath, Were dug up from the Same Pit Last Weekend, Along with the remin of Six Other Red Crescent World: Saleh Muamer, Mohammad Bahloul, Mohammed Al-Heila, Ashraf Abu Labda, Raed Al-Sharif and Rifatt Radwan – Six Palestinian Civili Defense Workers and An Employee of the A Relief Agency, UNRWA.

The IDF had claimed to have killed nine militants from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic jihad in the accident, but no other bodies was recovered from the mass tomb and Abed was adamant that there were no militants traveling with ambulances.

Abed himself has been retained for several hours, sometimes in a hole dug into the ground, during which he was completely stripped, beaten again and questioned about his past. Later he was forced to help in the control and photograph of local people to whom he was ordered to leave the area and go to Al-Mawasi.

“Some women transported their children who had been killed. A mother wore her son, who had been hit in the chest and killed. Another mother wore her daughter, who had also been hit to her chest. Another girl wore her sister, who had been hit at the feet, and many elderly people were between them. No one stopped women and children,” he said.

“Then I started directing the men, bringing five at a time to be in front of the camera,” said Abed. “Some of them passed without accidents, but others have been taken, dressed in white and put in a big hole. I still don’t know what happened to them.”

Abed was released only in the evening. He was returned his watch and underwear, but not his identity card, paramedical uniform or shoes. He was told to walk towards Al-Mawasi, but in the end he was able to mark a passing of a red background vehicle.

He said he still had pain from beatings and described his mood as “shattered”.

Abed took volunteer for the red crescent since he was 18 and worked in ambulances since the beginning of the war.

“We entered this field for love, despite the dangers that surround it and the risk we face during the missions,” he said. But the work was rapidly sliding from the dangerous to lethal.

“We are no longer surprising when someone is killed. Anyone can be targeted as we are dealing with an occupant force that ignores international laws and treaties,” said Abed. “Every mission we continue seems to be the last one.”