Hannah Ellis-Petersen
The Guardian / April 20, 2025
IDF says it is dismissing deputy commander for giving ‘inaccurate report’ on shooting that caused global outcry.
Jerusalem – Israel’s military has admitted to several “professional failures” and a breach of orders in the killing of 15 rescue workers in Gaza last month, and said that it was dismissing a deputy commander responsible.
The deadly shooting of eight Red Crescent paramedics, six civil defence workers and a UN staffer by Israeli troops, as they carried out a rescue mission in southern Gaza at dawn on 23 March, had prompted international outcry and calls for a war crimes investigation.
Their bodies were uncovered days after the shooting, buried in a sandy mass grave alongside their crushed vehicles. The UN said they had been killed “one by one”. Israel at first claimed that the medics’ vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire but later backtracked after phone video recovered from one of the medics contradicted the account.
On Sunday, the military said an investigation had “identified several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident”.
As a result, the deputy commander of the IDF’s Golani Brigade “will be dismissed from his position due to his responsibilities as the field commander … and for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief”.
Another commander, whose unit was in operation in the southern city of Rafah, where the killings took place, would be censured for “his overall responsibility for the incident”, the military said.
Despite admitting mistakes, the report does not recommend any criminal action to be taken against the military units responsible for the incident and found no violation of the IDF’s code of ethics. The findings of the report will now be passed along to the military advocate general. Israel’s extreme-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called the army chief’s decision to dismiss the responsible deputy commander “a grave mistake”.
The Palestine Red Crescent rejected the findings.
“The report is full of lies. It is invalid and unacceptable, as it justifies the killing and shifts responsibility to a personal error in the field command when the truth is quite different,” Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Red Crescent, told AFP.
Human rights lawyers also called the inquiry into question, pointing out that it had been done by Israel’s military itself and alleging it lacked independence.
Sawsan Zaher, a Palestinian human rights lawyer based in Israel, said: “There is nothing objective or neutral about this inquiry. The severity of this case should have led to an immediate criminal investigation. Instead we see the Israeli military inquiring into itself and yet again evidence of violations of international law and war crimes are swept under the carpet.”
The report maintains, without providing further evidence, that six of the 15 Palestinians killed were Hamas militants. Previous claims by Israel along the same lines have been denied by the Red Crescent.
The investigation provided the most thorough account from Israel’s forces about what they alleged took place that night. According to the report, it was an “operational misunderstanding” by Israeli forces that led them to fire on the ambulances. They denied that there had been any “indiscriminate fire” and claimed troops were simply alert to “real threats” from Hamas on the ground, accusing the militant group of regularly using ambulances to transport weapons and terrorists.
The investigation claimed that “poor night visibility” was to blame for the deputy battalion commander’s conclusion that the ambulances belonged to Hamas militants and the decision to fire on them. Video footage that emerged from the scene showed that the ambulances were clearly moving with flashing emergency lights.
The investigation also found that the shooting of a UN vehicle, which drove past 15 minutes later, was carried out in violation of orders.
Daniel Machover, a human rights lawyer who co-founded Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, said the admission of the circumstances of the killing of the UN worker, who was in a clearly marked UN vehicle, “alone should be grounds for a court martial and a war crimes investigation, not simply a dismissal”.
After uncovering the bodies from a sandy grave in Gaza days after the attack, a UN official said the workers had been killed “one by one”, while the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has said the men were “targeted at close range”.
Some witnesses and relatives have also alleged there was evidence that at least one of the victims had had their hands bound.
The military’s report said there was “no evidence to support claims of execution or that any of the deceased were bound before or after the shooting”. Ahmed Dhair, the forensic pathologist in Gaza who carried out the postmortems on the victims, said last week that he had not seen visible signs of restraint.
The Israeli military also defended the decision by soldiers to “evacuate” the bodies the next morning and claimed that while the decision to crush their vehicles was wrong, “there was no attempt to hide the incident”.
Dhair told the Guardian last week that the postmortems showed the victims were mostly killed by gunshots to the head and torso, as well as injuries caused by explosives. Dhair alleged evidence of “explosive bullets” in the bodies he had examined.
The Israeli statement on the findings concluded by saying that Israel’s military “regrets the harm caused to uninvolved civilians”. Asked if he thought the incident represented a pervasive issue within the Israeli military, Maj Gen Yoav Har-Even, who headed the inquiry, told journalists: “We’re saying it was a mistake, we don’t think it’s a daily mistake.”
Last week, Palestinian Red Crescent said that one of the two Palestinian paramedics who had survived the shooting, Assad al-Nsasrah, remained in Israeli detention.
Palestinians and international human rights groups have repeatedly accused Israel’s military of failing to properly investigate or whitewashing misconduct by its troops. A recent report by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation, concluded that Israel “did not take appropriate action to investigate suspected violations of international law that occurred as part of its war in Gaza”.
Ziv Stahl, the executive director of Yesh Din, said: “It’s another example of the almost full impunity given to soldiers for events in Gaza. In this case, I think they were quick to handle it because of the international pressure they are facing. By taking this small disciplinary action against one commander, it undermines any chance of a wider criminal investigation.”
The international criminal court, established by the international community as a court of last resort, has accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes. Israel, which is not a member of the court, has long asserted that its legal system is capable of investigating the army, and Netanyahu has accused the ICC of antisemitism.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen is The Guardian’s south Asia correspondent
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Humanitarian agencies reject IDF claim Gaza medic killings caused by ‘professional failures’
Bethan McKernan
The Guardian / April 21, 2025
UN, Palestinian Red Crescent and civil defence service condemn lack of accountability after Israeli investigation.
Jerusalem – The UN’s humanitarian agency, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Gaza’s civil defence service have rejected the findings of an Israeli military investigation that concluded the killings of 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers in Rafah last month were caused by “professional failures”.
Eight PRCS paramedics, six members of the civil defence rescue agency and one employee of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, were carrying out two rescue missions when they were shot and killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza in the early hours of 23 March.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at first claimed the medics’ vehicles were not using emergency signals when troops opened fire, but backtracked after mobile phone footage emerged contradicting the account. On Sunday, it said an internal investigation had “identified several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident”.
Gaza’s civil defence agency, which rescues victims of airstrikes, dismissed the Israeli army report, accusing the military of lying in an attempt to justify targeting the rescue convoys.
“The video filmed by one of the paramedics proves that the Israeli occupation’s narrative is false and demonstrates that it carried out summary executions,” Mohammed al-Mughair, a civil defence official, told Agence-France Presse on Monday, accusing Israel of seeking to “circumvent” its obligations under international law.
Jonathan Whittall, the UN’s humanitarian chief for Gaza, said the investigation did not go far enough. “A lack of real accountability undermines international law and makes the world a more dangerous place,” he said.
“Without accountability, we risk continuing to watch atrocities unfolding, and the norms designed to protect us all eroding.”
Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the PRCS, said: “The report is full of lies. It is invalid and unacceptable, as it justifies the killing and shifts responsibility to a personal error in the field command when the truth is quite different.”
The PRCS has previously called for an international investigation into the incident.
Sunday’s IDF report said the deputy commander of the Golani Brigade would be dismissed owing to his responsibilities in the field and for “providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief”. Another commander, whose unit was also operating in the area, would be disciplined for “his overall responsibility for the incident”, the military said.
According to the IDF, soldiers fired on the humanitarian workers travelling in ambulances and a fire truck because of “poor night visibility” and soldiers then violated orders by shooting at a UN vehicle which drove past 15 minutes later, resulting in the death of the driver.
The bodies and vehicles were put in a sandy mass grave that could not be accessed by a UN retrieval team until several days later, after which the UN said the medics had been killed “one by one” and two witnesses claimed at least one victim had his hands and feet bound.
Postmortem results released last week showed that the men were mostly killed by “gunshots to the head and torso” as well as injuries caused by explosives, and none of the victims had visible signs of restraint.
The army denied in its report that there had been “indiscriminate fire” and maintained that six of the killed men were Hamas militants, allegations the humanitarian agencies involved deny. None of those killed were armed.
During 18 months of war, Israeli forces have killed hundreds of medical workers and the staff of aid agencies and UN organisations in Gaza. In April last year, seven members of the charity World Central Kitchen died in a sustained Israeli attack on their clearly marked vehicles.
Human rights organisations have long accused the Israeli military of a culture of impunity, with few soldiers ever facing justice. In 2023, fewer than 1% of complaints made against Israeli troops in the occupied Palestinian territories ended in a conviction, according to the latest US state department annual human rights report.
Dan Owen, a researcher who analyses army data for the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, said the vast majority of incidents go unreported.
The IDF is yet to respond to a Yesh Din request made in June 2024 under freedom of information laws regarding the number of investigations and indictments in cases in which soldiers are suspected of harming civilians in the war in Gaza.
In August last year, the military said it had received approximately 1,000 complaints filed by lawyers and human rights groups related to the Gaza war, and had opened 74 investigations. Four concerned the deaths of Palestinians held in Israeli detention, eight concerned allegations of torture in prisons, and the rest were related to property damage and theft.
Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for The Guardian
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Israeli military admits ‘operational misunderstanding’ after troops killed 15 Gaza medics
Jabed Ahmed
The Independent / April 21, 2025
‘Poor night visibility’ was also blamed for the deaths of the aid workers following an investigation by Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
Footage from Palestine Red Crescent Society seems to counter Israeli account of Gaza medic killings.
The Israeli military has admitted “professional failures” and “breaches of orders” over the killing of 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza last month.
An investigation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) into the incident on 23 March found the deaths of the aid workers were a result of an “operational misunderstanding”. A commanding officer is to be reprimanded and a deputy commander to be dismissed, the military said.
The International Red Cross/Red Crescent called it the deadliest attack on its personnel in eight years. Eight Red Crescent personnel, six Civil Defense workers and a UN employee were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on emergency vehicles in Tel al-Sultan, a district of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Footage showed the convoy of vehicles, with lights flashing and logos visible, pulling up to help an ambulance that had come under fire earlier – before the vehicles came under a barrage of gunfire that lasted more than five minutes.
Israel first claimed the medics’ vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire but later backtracked after the footage emerged from a dead medic’s phone.
The Israeli military’s investigation found the deputy battalion commander assessed that the ambulances belonged to Hamas militants “due to poor night visibility”.
The soldiers then bulldozed over the bodies along with their vehicles, burying them in a mass grave before they were later discovered by officials from the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society had claimed the killed medics were “targeted at close range”. Night-vision drone footage provided by the military shows soldiers were 20 to 30 metres away from the ambulances.
The Israel initially said nine of the 15 medics were Hamas militants. But as part of its investigation, the military now says, without providing evidence, that six of them were “Hamas terrorists”. Hamas has rejected the accusation.
The investigation also found that the decision to crush the ambulances was wrong, but said that it was not an attempt to conceal the event.
Major General Yoav Har-Even, in charge of the military’s investigative branch, said the bodies and vehicles were removed from the road because the military wanted to use it for an evacuation route later that day.
No paramedic was armed and no weapons were found in any vehicle, Maj Gen Har-Even said.
“The examination found no evidence to support claims of execution or that any of the deceased were bound before or after the shooting,” the report said.
Israel said a deputy commander would be dismissed for providing an “incomplete and inaccurate report” of the incident.
The statement on the findings concluded by saying the Israel’s military “regrets the harm caused to uninvolved civilians”. The one survivor from the incident was detained for investigation and remains in custody for further questioning.
Israel has previously accused Hamas of moving and hiding its fighters inside ambulances and emergency vehicles, as well as in hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. It argues that this justifies the strikes on them. Medical personnel deny the accusations.
Israeli strikes since 7 October 2023 have killed more than 150 emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Civil Defense, most of them while on duty, as well as over 1,000 health workers, according to the United Nations.
Palestinians and international human rights groups have repeatedly accused Israel’s military of failing to properly investigate misconduct by its troops.
Jabed Ahmed is a news reporter at The Independent
Additional reporting by agencies
