Inhuman Israeli forces ‘executed’ Missing Gaza rescue team, officials say
A week following the disappearance of a team of aid workers in Rafah, a southern town in Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has reported that they are presumed to have been "executed" by Israeli forces.
On March 22, a contingent of 15 paramedics and rescue personnel from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Gaza’s Civil Defense went missing in the Tal Sultan neighborhood of Rafah. This disappearance followed an incident where ambulances and fire trucks were reportedly targeted by Israeli forces.
A group of responders reached the scene following an Israeli airstrike in Rafah.
In a statement released on Saturday, the PRCS announced that there has been no trace of their team members discovered as of yet.
On March 28, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported the alarming discovery of four ambulance vehicles, found entirely destroyed and buried in sand. The PRCS believes these vehicles may have been deliberately targeted.
Civil Defense representative Mahmoud Basal announced the discovery of the deceased body of an emergency responder.
Basal reported that once Civil Defense and Red Crescent teams were finally permitted to enter the area, they discovered “massive destruction” along with extensive bulldozing activities.
“Our vehicles, along with those of the Red Crescent, were discovered destroyed,” he noted, adding that the body of a worker, which had been buried by bulldozers, was later recovered.
In a report released on Saturday, al-Jazeera cited eyewitness accounts claiming that Israeli forces were responsible for the killing and burial of a team of paramedics and rescue workers who had been dispatched to Rafah the previous week.
Israel’s military has announced that its forces engaged in gunfire targeting “suspicious vehicles” that were approaching troops without any prior coordination on that particular day.
Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, described the incident in the city of Rafah as “a deliberate and brutal massacre” targeting civil defense and Palestinian Red Crescent teams.
Since the onset of Israel’s military conflict in Gaza in October 2023, 19 members of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) have reportedly lost their lives while performing their duties, as stated by the organization.
A society spokesperson declared on Thursday, “We cannot endure the addition of more names to this sorrowful list.”
In a separate incident, Israeli forces fatally shot a member of the World Central Kitchen (WCK) and wounded six others during a meal distribution operation in Gaza on Thursday.
