RAMALLAH/GAZA CITY: The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Monday that 15 medics and rescuers killed by Israeli forces last month in Gaza were shot in the upper body with “intent to kill”.
Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir meanwhile ordered a more in-depth investigation into the attack after an initial probe was completed by the military.
The killings occurred in the southern Gaza Strip on March 23, days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the territory. They have since sparked international condemnation, with Israel insisting there were militants in the ambulances.
The PRCS announcement came as Hamas and rescuers said an Israeli strike on southern Gaza killed one journalist and wounded nine others, while the Israeli military reported it targeted a militant posing as a reporter.
The journalist is one of at least 12 people killed in Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory on Monday, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency, as the conflict entered its 19th month.
Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told journalists in Ramallah that an autopsy of the humanitarian personnel slain in March revealed that “all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill”. He called for an international probe into the killings. “We call on the world to form an independent and impartial international commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the deliberate killing of the ambulance crews in the Gaza Strip,” Khatib said.
Eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Gaza civil defence agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugee were killed in the incident, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA and Palestinian rescuers.
