‘Dad, help me… we were targeted by the Israelis’: Audio and video capture last moments of aid workers killed in Gaza

By Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Kareem Khadder, Jeremy Diamond, Abeer Salman, Mohammad Al-Sawalhi and Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN

(CNN) — When paramedic Hassan Hosni Al-Hila felt too sick to continue his late-night assignment with the Palestine Red Crescent Society on March 23, his son gladly agreed to cover his shift.

That shift would prove to be 21-year-old Mohammad’s last.

Within a few hours, while the young paramedic was dispatched with a convoy of emergency vehicles to find a missing ambulance crew in Rafah, southern Gaza, Mohammad called his father pleading for help amidst intense Israeli military gunfire.

“’Come to me, Dad, help me… we were targeted by the Israelis, and they are now shooting at us directly,” Al-Hila recalled his son telling him over the phone. “The call ended after that.”

His fate would remain unknown for over a week, until rescue teams granted permission by the Israeli military to access the area uncovered a horrific scene: a mass grave containing the bodies of 15 first responders buried along with their crushed emergency vehicles.

A growing trove of evidence detailing the final moments of the first responders has blown apart the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) initial narrative of what unfolded that day, in which it claimed without offering evidence that some vehicles were moving suspiciously without headlights or flashing lights toward the Israeli troops and that members of the emergency teams were militants.

A CNN review of video capturing the gunfire, photos and satellite imagery of the site, along with interviews with forensic experts and family members provides a detailed account of the Israeli military’s targeting and burial of clearly marked rescue crews from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Civil Defense, and the United Nations. A CNN interview with a survivor of the attack and exclusive audio from a medical worker recorded in his final moments also contradict Israel’s account.

The IDF said it had begun re-investigating the incident after footage emerged Friday showing ambulances and a fire truck traveling with their emergency signal lights on. After being briefed on the preliminary inquiry, the IDF Chief of Staff on Monday ordered the initial inquiry be “pursued in greater depth” through an “investigation mechanism” and completed within days. The video, first published by The New York Times, was obtained by CNN from the PRCS.

“All the claims raised regarding the incident will be examined through the mechanism and presented in a detailed and thorough manner for a decision on how to handle the event,” the IDF said in a statement Monday.

According to an Israeli military official, troops from a brigade that had set up an ambush opened fire on the emergency crews that morning, after intelligence had deemed their movements “suspicious,” and believed they had successfully carried out an attack on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants.

Family members and colleagues of the slain paramedics vehemently deny that any of the workers were militants and are calling for an independent investigation into the killings.

On seeing his son’s body, which Hosni said was riddled with bullet holes, he apologized for not being beside him in his final moments, saying their ambulances would have been dispatched together.

“I told him, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t join you,’” Hosni recalls. “If I hadn’t returned home, [he] and I would have been together on the same mission.”

‘The gasp of death’

The chain of events began in the early hours of Sunday, March 23, following reports of an Israeli strike in Rafah. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) dispatched an ambulance with three crew members to respond to the scene.

PRCS said they did not coordinate the dispatch with COGAT, the Israeli military agency overseeing activities in the Palestinian territories, because the area was not designated as a “red zone” where coordination is required. Hours after the attack, the IDF designated the area as a “red zone” as part of its expanded operation in Rafah.

According to PRCS medic Munther Abed – who was sitting in the back of the ambulance en route to the scene – the crew was suddenly targeted with heavy, direct gunfire by Israeli forces. Abed said he survived the attack by throwing himself to the floor of the vehicle for cover, hearing the pained yells of his colleagues in the front, both of whom were killed.

“I couldn’t hear anything from my colleagues except the sound of death, the gasp of death, their last breath,” Abed told CNN. “A cry of pain, that’s all I heard from them.”

The ambulance crashed into a power pole, coming to a stop along with the gunfire, according to Abed. He said Israeli soldiers opened the back doors of the vehicle and detained him outside, stripping him down to his underwear.

An Israeli military official said the troops shot at a vehicle at 4 a.m., killing two individuals and detaining another, all of whom the IDF claimed without providing evidence were Hamas security officials. The official also denied that the vehicle was an ambulance or that the individuals were uniformed paramedics. Abed, who said he was released later that day from Israeli custody after the military checked his records, rejects those claims.

Once communication with Abed’s crew was lost, PRCS dispatched additional ambulances alongside Civil Defense vehicles to check on the missing team.

However, the support crews would meet the same, grim fate. A newly released video discovered on the phone of one of the 15 deceased ambulance and relief team members captured their final moments before being killed by the Israeli military.

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 video shows the convoy stopping when it comes across another vehicle that had seemingly crashed into a power pole on the side of the road. Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the PRCS, confirmed in a press briefing on Monday that the vehicle seen in the footage was one of the agency’s ambulances.

Two of the rescuers seen in the footage getting out of the vehicles are wearing reflective, PRCS emergency responder 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.

Trevor Ball, a former US Army senior explosive ordnance disposal team member, told CNN that the gunfire heard in the footage was consistent with small arms and light weapons. “Even while using night vision the lights from the vehicles in the convoy would be noticeable,” he added.

The paramedic filming the incident, identified by the PRCS as Rifaat Radwan, is heard repeatedly saying the “shahada,” which Muslims recite when facing death, 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 unclear who they are or what they are saying.

Another medic who was on the second dispatch, Ashraf Abu Libda, made a call at 4:55 a.m. to a colleague as the convoy came under fire. An audio recording of the call, obtained by CNN, captures him repeating the shahada before saying “there are soldiers, there are soldiers here.” A soldier can be heard in the background, saying “come, come, come” in Hebrew.

The call casts doubt over the timeline laid out by the Israeli soldiers involved in the attack, who said the rescue convoy arrived two hours after the initial ambulance, at 6 a.m., according to the Israeli military official. The video also shows the convoy arriving in darkness, with the first rays of sunlight visible on the horizon, indicating it was filmed before 6 a.m. – sunrise on March 23 in Gaza was at 5:42 a.m.

Following the deadly attacks, Abed – who told CNN he was beaten and abused by Israeli soldiers during interrogations near the scene – said he witnessed the IDF’s burial of the bodies and vehicles, seeing bulldozers dig a large pit, crush the vehicles and pile them into the hole.

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 UN, and they wanted to prevent the bodies being eaten by animals. One forensic expert who reviewed images of the badly damaged bodies said that their state of decomposition suggested they may have been scavenged on by dogs.

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. Bulldozer tracks and activity are clearly visible in the image.

Another satellite image, also published by Al Jazeera and analyzed by CNN, dated March 25, shows an Israeli tank, an excavator, and military bulldozers at the same location. Where the ambulances once stood, remnants of vehicles protruded from disturbed ground.

Ball told CNN that images of the excavation point to a direct gunfire attack and crushing by heavily armored vehicles. “There are some visible bullet holes in the fire truck, and the damage to the fire truck and UN vehicle looks more consistent with heavy vehicles,” he added.

An IDF forward-operating base and staging area at an unfinished hospital in Tal al-Sultan, about 1 kilometer from the site of the mass grave, is visible in satellite imagery from Planet Labs. Ball said tracks from heavy vehicles can be seen between the base and grave site, adding that the military would have had a clear line of sight to where the bodies and vehicles were buried.

The IDF claimed on April 1 without offering proof 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 8 other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.”

In a statement on Monday, the IDF revised that number, saying six Hamas operatives were identified among the casualties, without providing evidence.

But the aid agencies said the name given by the Israeli military did not match that of any emergency workers dispatched, and no Hamas militants were among the group. CNN obtained from the PRCS the names of 14 of those killed; none was identified as Mohammad Shubaki. A spokesperson with the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said the name of the 15th man killed – an UNRWA employee – was not shared out of respect for his family but was not the name given by the Israeli military.

Abed told CNN he does not know anybody by the name Shubaki, nor had he heard it before.

The mass grave

Over the course of the next several days, PRCS and UN personnel negotiated permission from the Israeli military to visit the area on several occasions. It would be a week later that a convoy consisting of PRCS, Civil Defense, and UN OCHA crews unearthed the mass grave.

The operation recovered a total of 15 bodies: eight members of PRCS, six from Civil Defense, and one UNRWA employee. Photos and videos of the excavation reviewed by CNN and forensic experts offer clues as to the crews’ visibility as first responders in their final moments.

One PRCS medic from the convoy, Asaad Al-Nassasrah, remains missing and the organization has demanded information about his whereabouts from the Israeli military. CNN has also asked the IDF for more information about the missing medic.

Some of the PRCS paramedics pictured in photos were buried in their uniforms emblazoned with the group’s emblem and reflective stripes. Others were still wearing their blue latex gloves, indicating that they were on duty and prepared to respond to distress calls. The bodies were mixed with mangled fragments of the crushed emergency vehicles, under mounds of sand, footage shared by UN OCHA of the exhumation shows.

“They were buried in their uniforms with their gloves on, they were ready to save lives, and they ended up in a mass grave,” Jonathan Whittall, the head of UN OCHA in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a press briefing last week.

A forensic pathologist examining the bodies of the emergency responders told CNN that their autopsies had shown bullet wounds.

The deaths have sparked international condemnation, and the emergence of the footage prompted the IDF to re-investigate the killings.

The findings of the IDF’s preliminary investigation included information from Israeli aerial surveillance video that has not been made public, an Israeli military official told CNN on Saturday.

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, opening fire in two instances on vehicles arriving in the area.

Soldiers were told by drone operators that the vehicles in the convoy 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.

PRCS president Al-Khatib has demanded an independent investigation into the matter.

“We don’t trust any of the army investigations and this is why we were very clear in saying that we need an independent inquiry into this,” Al-Khatib said in a UN press conference.

First responders under attack

For Saleh Muammar – one of the PRCS paramedics killed and buried in the mass grave – this was not the first time he had been shot while on duty, according to his wife Hadeel.

Two months earlier, Saleh was shot in the chest by the IDF, Hadeel told CNN in an interview. She said that he survived the attack, getting “a new lease on life” and returned to work as a paramedic.

“We bade him farewell every time he left, we expected that he would be martyred,” Hadeel said. “I felt that he would leave this world because the nature of his work is full of risks.”

International aid and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly condemned the Israeli military’s attacks on medical facilities and personnel.

More than 400 aid workers have been killed in Israeli attacks in the enclave since October 7, 2023, according to OCHA’s latest update released last week. The PRCS says the number of its staff killed in line of duty by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023 has now reached 27.

“The occupation’s targeting of Red Crescent medics … can only be considered a war crime punishable under international humanitarian law, which the occupation continues to violate before the eyes of the entire world,” PCRS said.

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