Israel
IDF admits mistakes over Red Crescent incidents
The army has said that the ambulances were wrongly identified as a threat
April 2, 2025 11:57
The army has said that the ambulances were wrongly identified as a threat
April 2, 2025 11:57The IDF has admitted that soldiers fired on unarmed medics after mistakenly identifying ambulances as a threat.
Reports last week indicated that two waves of ambulance crews had been caught up in the same IDF operation on March 23, following what the army described as an exchange of fire with a car containing three terrorists near Rafah.
Some of the ambulances sent into the area to retrieve bodies of terrorists following a firefight with troops were allegedly shot at when they arrived, with two people killed. A convoy of vehicles from the Red Crescent, civil defence force and Hamas-run health ministry was then dispatched to the scene before coming under further fire.
The IDF had initially stated that the first wave of vehicles had been suspicious, while it claimed that the convoy had approached the scene without emergency lights and its movements had not been coordinated with the military.
However, footage recovered from the mobile phone of one of the medics killed, which has been verified by a number of news outlets, appeared to contradict this account. The clip showed the ambulances clearly marked and with their lights on as they came under fire.
In a new briefing, the IDF has now said that the convoy arrived shortly after a Hamas police vehicle drove through the area, with an Israeli surveillance aircraft monitoring its movements.
The aircraft then alerted troops on the ground to the presence of the convoy, though the army has said it will not release the footage of the interaction.
Soldiers then opened fire on the convoy when it arrived at their location, mistakenly believing the vehicles to be a threat, the IDF confirmed.
The military’s spokesperson declined to say how far the troops were from the convoy but admitted that the initial statement claiming that the ambulances were not clearly marked or did not have their lights on was incorrect, adding that it was based on testimony from the soldiers themselves.
They confirmed there would be a “thorough examination” of the “sequence of events and the handling of the situation”.
Meanwhile, 15 of those apparently involved were later found buried in what Jonathan Whittall, head of the Gaza branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), called a “mass grave”.
The bodies of 15 medical and humanitarian aid workers were recovered in southern Gaza alongside their wrecked emergency vehicles.
— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 31, 2025
'Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,' says Jonathan Whittall, Head of Office at OCHA OPT 🔗 https://t.co/8MhrktTPfv pic.twitter.com/L5awXuyK9a
They were reported to include eight Red Crescent Medics, five civil defence workers and a UN employee. The Red Crescent claimed that one had been found with their hands bound.
Commenting on the claim, the IDF spokesperson said that the burials were an approved practice to prevent wild animals eating corpses left out in the open and that they had told the Red Cross about the locations of the graves. They added that the ambulances had been moved and buried the next day to clear the road.
They also claimed that six of the 15 were connected to Hamas, but did not provide further detail or evidence in support of this claim.
The Times of Israel reported that the IDF said would release the names of the suspected Hamas fighters shortly.
Allegations that the workers were directly executed by gunfire or that any of those discovered were bound were also fiercely denied by the IDF.
Jagan Chapagain, the secretary general of the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), said: “I am heartbroken. These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians.
"They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked. They should have returned to their families; they did not.”