Watan-As usual in its efforts to obscure facts and cover up its crimes, the Israeli occupation army attempted to change its narrative regarding the massacre of paramedics in Rafah, southern Gaza, which left 15 medics and civil defense workers dead. Israeli forces had ambushed and surrounded them, unleashing heavy gunfire—as documented in a video found on one of the paramedic’s phones.
After the release of the video, reportedly obtained from a senior United Nations diplomat who requested anonymity, the Israeli military rushed to revise its initial story, claiming it had launched an investigation and would release its findings by Sunday evening. Initially, the military claimed its soldiers opened fire on vehicles approaching their position “suspiciously—in the dark, without lights or any markings to indicate they were ambulances or civil defense workers.” It also alleged that “nine of the dead were members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad traveling in Red Crescent vehicles.”
Footage Shatters Israeli Claims in Rafah Paramedic Killings
However, the video extracted from the slain medic’s phone completely refuted this version. It showed clearly uniformed paramedics using marked ambulances and fire trucks with flashing lights, who were gunned down in a hail of bullets by Israeli troops.
Late last night, the Israeli army said it was “conducting an investigation into the incident, led by Southern Command Chief Yaniv Asor, with findings to be presented today to Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.”
Israeli army spokesperson Nadav Shoshani had earlier claimed that Israeli forces did not target ambulances “randomly,” but identified multiple vehicles approaching “suspiciously without headlights or emergency signals,” prompting troops to open fire. He insisted that nine of the deceased were armed members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But the released footage exposed these claims as lies, forcing the army to announce a deeper investigation.
Sequence of Events According to the Israeli Army
On March 23, 2025, as fighting resumed, an Israeli Golani Brigade unit was lying in ambush in the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah. At 4:00 p.m., Red Cross ambulances passed through the area in coordination with the army. At 4:30 p.m., a Hamas police vehicle with lights approached the soldiers, prompting the Israeli troops to open fire, killing one person and arresting two others, who were taken into Israel for interrogation.
Then, according to the army, at 6:00 p.m., a convoy of ambulances arrived at the same location. The military claims these ambulances stopped near the previously targeted Hamas vehicle, and troops opened fire thinking the ambulances were advancing toward them, claiming they felt “threatened.”
Israel’s “Kan 11” broadcaster reported that after the massacre, a Golani battalion deputy commander arrived at the scene and covered the ambulances with netting, then passed the coordinates to UN officials so they could retrieve the bodies. However, the UN team did not find the bodies right away and postponed their retrieval. According to the report, a D9 bulldozer later advanced and buried the ambulances and bodies under sand due to ongoing combat in the area.
As for why the bodies were buried, the army claimed, “This is our standard procedure to prevent stray animals from eating corpses.” However, numerous videos have surfaced showing Israeli soldiers laughing as stray dogs mauled the bodies of slain Palestinians dumped in the streets.
On March 30, days after the massacre, the Israeli military and UN representatives recovered the bodies of the medics and civil defense workers. According to the ultra-Orthodox news site “B’hadrei Haredim,” the army claimed it used a “facial recognition system” to identify six of the 15 victims as Hamas operatives. The military insisted there were no executions or close-range shootings, claiming those six were killed due to their affiliation with Hamas.
However, this account was again contradicted by the video evidence, as well as by the absurdity of the claim: if the army only identified the bodies after the massacre using facial recognition, how could it have known who they were before opening fire in the dark?
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