Video showing final moments of Gaza emergency workers casts doubt on Israeli account of killings

By Abeer Salman, Tim Lister, Jeremy Diamond and Eyad Kourdi, CNN

(CNN) — A video has emerged showing the final moments of more than a dozen Palestinian emergency workers shot dead by Israeli troops in Gaza last month, casting doubt on Israeli claims that soldiers opened fire on vehicles “advancing suspiciously.”

The video is filmed from the front of a vehicle and shows a convoy of clearly marked ambulances moving along a road at dawn, with headlights and flashing emergency lights on.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says the video was found on the phone of one of the 15 ambulance and relief team members killed by the Israeli military.

Their bodies were found in a mass grave more than a week after they were reported as missing. Eight of the 14 bodies recovered from the site in the southern Rafah area were identified as members of the PRCS, five as civil defense, and one as a UN agency employee, PRCS said in a statement.

The deaths sparked international condemnation, and the footage appears to contradict the assertion by the Israeli military that some vehicles were moving suspiciously without lights.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) asserted last week that “several uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals. IDF troops then opened fire at the suspected vehicles.”

After the video emerged, the IDF repeated that the incident was being investigated – the first results of which are expected to be presented internally on Sunday.

“All claims, including the documentation circulating about the incident, will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation,” it said Saturday.

The video shows the convoy stopping when it comes across another vehicle at the side of the road – which the PRCS says was an ambulance that had been sent earlier to help injured civilians. Two of the rescuers who get out of the vehicles are wearing uniforms. A fire truck and an ambulance at the scene are marked with the PRCS insignia.

Almost immediately there is intense gunfire, which can be heard hitting the convoy. The video ends, but the audio continues for five minutes.

The paramedic filming, identified by the PRCS as Rifaat Radwan, is heard repeatedly saying the “shahada,” which Muslims recite when facing death. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die.

At one point he says: “Forgive me mom, this is the path I chose – to help people – I swear I didn’t choose this path but to help people.”

The voices of others in the convoy can also be heard, as well as those of people shouting commands in Hebrew. It’s not clear who they are or what they are saying.

Initial investigation findings

The IDF’s Southern Command chief, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, is set to present findings from its investigation into the killings to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Sunday.

The investigation includes information from Israeli aerial surveillance video that has not been made public, an Israeli military official told CNN on Saturday.

Asor began re-investigating the incident after footage emerged contradicting IDF soldiers’ description of the vehicles as moving with their lights off, the Israeli military official said.

According to the military official, troops from the Golani infantry brigade had set up an ambush along a road in the early hours of March 23. Around 4:30 a.m., they opened fire on a first vehicle, killing two individuals and detaining another who the IDF claims were Hamas internal security officials. Roughly two hours later, at approximately 6 a.m., the ambulance convoy arrived in the area.

Soldiers were told by drone operators that the vehicles were advancing “in a suspicious manner,” the military official said, adding that soldiers involved in the attack claimed to investigators that they opened fire after being surprised by the convoy stopping on the side of the road and by individuals getting out of their vehicles quickly.

After seeing the bodies of more than a dozen uniformed emergency responders on the ground, the troops said they still believed they had successfully carried out the attack following efforts to verify the identities of some of the deceased, the military official said.

The Israeli military has yet to provide any evidence for its claim that nine of the emergency workers killed were militants.

The IDF said on April 1 that “following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who took part in the October 7 massacre, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.” The IDF did not offer proof of the identity of the alleged terrorists.

CNN has obtained from the PRCS the names of 14 of those killed; none is identified as Mohammad Shubaki. The PRCS said the name of the fifteenth man killed – an UNRWA employee – was withheld out of respect for his family but was not the name given by the Israeli military.

An Israeli military official told CNN last week that Israeli forces buried the bodies of the workers because they expected it would take time to coordinate their retrieval with the PRCS and the United Nations. Israeli officials have not explained why their emergency vehicles were also buried, citing the ongoing investigation.

Satellite imagery from March 23, first published by Al Jazeera Arabic and analyzed by CNN, shows Israeli army vehicles surrounding a cluster of five ambulances from the PRCS and Civil Defense.

Another satellite image, also published by Al Jazeera and analyzed by CNN, dated March 25, shows an Israeli tank, an excavator, and other military vehicles at the same location.

Where the ambulances once stood, remnants of vehicles protruded from disturbed ground.

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