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Gaza aid worker killings: One humanitarian still missing in mass grave
© UNOCHA
Humanitarians work to recover the bodies of 15 first responders killed in their uniforms, who had been driving clearly marked vehicles, when they came under fire by Israeli forces on 23 March near Rafah, southern Gaza.
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“This is a huge blow to us…These people were shot,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office, OCHA.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk issued a statement on Monday condemning the Israeli military's attack, calling for an independent, prompt and thorough investigation into the apparently systematic killings.
“Normally we are not at a loss for words, and we are spokespeople, but sometimes we have difficulty finding them. This is one of those cases,” he told journalists in Geneva, referring to video footage taken near Tal-As-Sultan by an OCHA rescue party showing a crushed UN vehicle, ambulances and a fire truck that had been flattened and buried in the sand by the Israeli military.
Rafah mission
The clearly identified humanitarian workers from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Palestinian Civil Defence and the UN Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, had been despatched to collect injured people on 23 March in the Rafah area.
They came under fire from Israeli forces who were advancing in the area, OCHA’s top official in the Palestinian Occupied Territory said, in a detailed post on X.
Jonathan Whittall explained that on the day of the attack, five ambulances, a fire truck – and a UN vehicle which arrived following the initial assault – were all hit by Israeli fire, after which contact was lost with teams.
One survivor said Israeli forces had killed both of the crew in his ambulance, Mr. Whittall said. “For days, OCHA coordinated to reach the site but our access was only granted five days later…After hours of digging, we recovered one body - a civil defence worker beneath his fire truck.”
Bodies buried in the sand
The week-long rescue operation ended on Sunday 30 March with the recovery of the bodies of 15 humanitarian colleagues: eight from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six from the Palestinian Civil Defence (PCD) and the UNRWA worker.
The body of one more PRCS worker is still missing at the site, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which on Monday repeated its calls for information from the Israeli military.
Available information indicated that the first team had been killed by Israeli forces on 23 March; the other emergency and aid crews were struck one after another over several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues, OCHA said.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Türk said in his statement that the discovery of the bodies buried next to their "clearly destroyed" vehicles was "deeply disturbing".
"This raises significant questions with regard to the conduct of the Israeli army during and in the aftermath of the incident," he added.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1161736