23 March
At 4.20am, a Purple Crescent ambulance on its strategy to accumulate individuals injured by an airstrike in Rafah comes underneath Israeli fireplace in Hashashin. Two paramedics are killed.
A survivor, Munther Abed, is detained and interrogated. A couple of hours later, a convoy together with ambulances, a fireplace truck, well being ministry autos and a UN automobile is dispatched to get well the our bodies of the 2 paramedics. It additionally comes underneath fireplace. Two well being ministry autos drive away however contact is misplaced with the remainder of the convoy. Two ambulances despatched from Rafah additionally disappear.
Six days earlier, Israel had ended a two-month-old ceasefire and resumed its army marketing campaign towards Hamas and different militant teams in Gaza with heavy aerial bombing and floor operations.
24 March
Gaza’s civil defence company says it has not heard from the lacking individuals. Entry to the positioning is blocked by the Israel Protection Forces (IDF).
26 March
A convoy of autos carrying officers from the United Nations Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) tries and fails to entry the positioning. Whereas en route, the Ocha group see a girl being shot, the bullet hitting her behind the top, and a person who’s attempting to retrieve her additionally being shot. The girl’s physique is recovered and put right into a UN automobile.
27 March
The Ocha group lastly make it to the positioning. They report discovering the ambulances, the UN automobile and the hearth truck crushed and partially buried. The physique of a civil defence employee is recovered from underneath the hearth truck, however the restoration mission has to withdraw because the scenario turns into unsafe.
28 March
The civil defence company says it has accessed the positioning and located the physique of its group chief there, in addition to an ambulance and the Purple Crescent’s fireplace truck, which it says has been “reduced to a pile of scrap metal”.
30 March
Ocha officers and Purple Crescent staff return to the positioning and discover the our bodies of eight Purple Crescent staff, the 5 different civil defence responders and one UN employees member buried in a mass grave. A ninth Purple Crescent employee stays unaccounted for.
The crushed UN automobile and the hearth truck may be seen in images taken on the scene.
In a video filmed on the scene, Jonathan Whittall, the top of Ocha in Palestine, says the useless had been shot “one by one” then buried in a mass grave.
31 March
The burials are postponed pending autopsies. The pinnacle of Ocha, Tom Fletcher, says the useless had been discovered buried by their wrecked and well-marked autos. “They were killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives,” Fletcher says. “We demand answers and justice.”
The IDF claims its troopers opened fireplace on the autos as a result of they had been “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals” and alleges, with out offering proof, that Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants had been amongst these killed. None had been reported to be within the mass grave.
1 April
Two witnesses inform the Guardian that a few of the our bodies recovered from the grave had had their palms or toes tied, suggesting they had been shot after being detained. A Purple Crescent official says Israeli troopers could possibly be heard – over a telephone line that was open to one of many paramedics on the time of the convoy taking pictures – ordering restraints to detain obvious survivors from the convoy.
2 April
A forensics marketing consultant who examined 5 of the our bodies says there’s proof of execution-style killing in some circumstances primarily based on the “specific and intentional” location of pictures taken at shut vary. The UK international secretary, David Lammy, says Gaza has turn out to be the world’s most harmful place for humanitarian staff and requires these answerable for the killings to be held accountable.
3 April
The Israeli army says it’s investigating the killings. It maintains that “terrorists” had been advancing within the ambulances.
Abed, the survivor, tells the Guardian he was detained and overwhelmed and needed to watch as one ambulance and rescue automobile after one other approached the scene and got here underneath intense gunfire. He says he witnessed the wreckage being buried by army bulldozers, and that he noticed the lacking Purple Crescent employee, Assad al-Nassara, alive and in Israeli detention. After a number of hours of Israeli interrogation Abed was launched and left to stroll homewards.
