Survivor challenges Israeli account of attack on Gaza ambulances

“I’m the only survivor who saw what happened to my colleagues,” Munther Abed says, scrolling through pictures of his fellow paramedics on his phone.

He survived the Israeli attack that killed 15 emergency workers in Gaza by diving to the floor in the back of his ambulance, as his two colleagues in the front were shot in the early hours of 23 March.

“We left the headquarters roughly at dawn,” he told one of the BBC’s trusted freelance journalists working in Gaza, explaining how the response team from the Palestinian Red Crescent, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) gathered on the edge of the southern city of Rafah after receiving reports of gunfire and wounded people.

“Roughly by 04:30, all Civil Defence vehicles were in place. At 04:40 the first two vehicles went out. At 04:50, the last vehicle arrived. At around 05:00, the agency [UN] car was shot at directly in the street,” he says.

The Israeli military says its forces opened fire because the vehicles were moving suspiciously towards soldiers without prior co-ordination and with their lights off. It also claimed that nine Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives were killed in the incident.

Munther challenges that account.

“During day and at night, it’s the same thing. External and internal lights are on. Everything tells you it’s an ambulance vehicle that belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent. All lights were on until the vehicle came under direct fire,” he says.

After that, he adds, he was pulled from the wreckage by Israeli soldiers, arrested and blindfolded. He claimed he was interrogated over 15 hours, before being released.

The BBC has put his claims to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but it is yet to respond.

“The IDF did not randomly attack an ambulance,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar claimed, when questioned at a news conference, echoing the IDF’s statements.

“Several uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals. IDF troops then opened fire at the suspected vehicles.”

He added: “Following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military terrorist, Mohammed Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who took part in the October 7 massacre, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.”

Shubaki’s name is not on the list of the 15 dead emergency workers – eight of whom were Palestinian Red Crescent medics, six were Civil Defence first responders, and one was an Unrwa staff member.

Israel has not accounted for the whereabouts of Shubaki’s body or offered any evidence of the direct threat the emergency workers posed.

Munther rejects Israel’s claim that Hamas may have used the ambulances as cover.

“That’s utterly untrue. All crews are civilian,” he says.

“We don’t belong to any militant group. Our main duty is to offer ambulance services and save people’s lives. No more, no less”.

Gaza’s paramedics carried their own colleagues to their funerals earlier this week. There was an outcry of grief along with calls for accountability. One bereaved father told the BBC that his son was killed “in cold blood”.

International agencies could only access the area to retrieve their bodies a week after the attack. They were found buried in sand alongside the wrecked ambulances, fire truck and UN vehicle.

Sam Rose, acting director of Unrwa’s Gaza office, says: “What we know is that fifteen people lost their lives, that they were buried in shallow graves in a sand berm in the middle of the road, treated with complete indignity and what would appear to be an infringement of international humanitarian law.

“But it’s only if we have an investigation, a full and complete investigation, that we’ll be able to get to the bottom of it.”

Israel is yet to commit to an investigation. According to the UN, at least 1,060 healthcare workers have been killed since the start of the conflict.

“Certainly all ambulance workers, all medics, all humanitarian workers inside Gaza right now feel increasingly insecure, increasingly fragile,” Mr Rose says.

One paramedic is still unaccounted for following the 23 March incident.

“They were not just colleagues but friends”, Munther says, nervously running prayer beads through his fingers. “We used to eat, drink, laugh and have jokes together… I consider them my second family.”

“I will expose the crimes committed by the occupation [Israel] against my colleagues. If I was not the only survivor, who could have told the world what they did to our colleagues, and who would have told their story?”