A video released by The New York Times has exposed a deliberate lie by the Israeli army regarding the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics in southern Gaza on March 23.
In its initial statement and after international outrage, the Israeli army claimed that the vehicles were advancing “suspiciously” from its forces "without headlights, or emergency signals, (and) their movement was not coordinated in advance."
The army claimed that nine members from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups were killed in the attack.
However, the footage released on Saturday contradicted Israeli claims and presented new evidence that the vehicles involved in the attack were clearly marked and had their emergency lights on.
The video was captured by one of the medics who was killed in the attack and was found among the 15 medics buried in a mass grave in Gaza.
The Israeli army did not comment on the newly released footage.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society had announced the discovery of 14 bodies following the Israeli attack.
The victims included eight Red Crescent workers, five Civil Defence personnel, and a UN agency staff member.
It came days after the Palestinian Civil Defence said it recovered the body of a team member killed by Israeli forces, bringing the number of deaths from the attack to 15.
More than 50,600 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza in Israel's military onslaught since October 2023.
Gaza media office condemns killing
The Palestinian media office in Gaza said on Saturday that the Israeli military carried out a "brutal and unprecedented" execution of medical and civil defence teams in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, in southern Gaza, on March 23.
The statement came as a response to a viral video released on Saturday, which was found on the phone of a Palestinian paramedic whose body was discovered in a mass grave alongside 14 colleagues after they were executed by the Israeli army while performing their humanitarian duties.
The media office condemned the incident, calling it "another crime added to the occupation's black record."
It emphasised that the footage "completely disproves the Israeli occupation's false and misleading narrative" that the vehicles approached “suspiciously” without clear signals, saying the footage “exposed the lies of the Israeli military.”
This crime is a "flagrant violation of all international conventions," and it held the international community responsible for its silence, it added.
The office called for an "independent international investigation" into the execution of the medical and civil defence teams, as well as for truth-finding missions to visit the targeted sites and mass graves where Israel “concealed the horrors of its ongoing genocide.”
It urged for the immediate protection of humanitarian teams operating in Gaza.
UN calls the killing of Palestinian medics and first responders who were on a rescue mission in southern Gaza "unacceptable".
