<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/29/israel-admits-firing-at-ambulances-in-gaza-after-palestinians-say-rescuers-missing-in-rafah>
"Israel’s military admitted on Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza
Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”, with Hamas condemning it
as a “war crime” that killed at least one person.
The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in the
southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.
Israeli troops launched an offensive there on 20 March, two days after the army
resumed aerial bombardments of Gaza after an almost two-month-long truce.
Attacks on medical staff, hospitals and ambulances are potential war crimes.
Israeli troops had “opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several
Hamas terrorists”, the military claimed in a statement to
Agence
France-Presse.
“A few minutes afterward, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the
troops … The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles,
eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.”
The military did not say if there was fire coming from the vehicles.
It added that “after an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the
suspicious vehicles … were ambulances and fire trucks”, and condemned what it
claimed was “the repeated use” by “terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip of
ambulances for terrorist purposes”.
The day after the incident, Gaza’s civil defence agency said in a statement
that it had not heard from a team of six rescuers from Tal al-Sulta who had
been urgently dispatched to respond to deaths and injuries.
On Friday, it reported finding the body of the team leader and the rescue
vehicles – an ambulance and a firefighting vehicle – and said a vehicle from
the Palestine Red Crescent Society was also “reduced to a pile of scrap metal”.
Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, accused Israel of carrying
out “a deliberate and brutal massacre against civil defence and Palestinian Red
Crescent teams in the city of Rafah”.
“The targeted killing of rescue workers – who are protected under international
humanitarian law – constitutes a flagrant violation of the Geneva conventions
and a war crime,” he said."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
