TRANSCRIPT
The final words of paramedic, Rifaat Radwan, recorded on his phone.
"Forgive me, mother," the 24-year-old begged as he lay dying, while his ambulance convoy came under a barrage of Israeli fire.
Radwan is among fifteen Palestinian emergency workers killed by Israel in March, near the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
When Israel finally allowed the U-N access to the site four days later, their bodies were found buried in the sand... alongside their crushed vehicles.
An Israeli military probe into the incident has now described that grim discovery as the result of a professional failure.
The medics were killed while responding to the distress calls of their colleagues early on the 23rd of March, days into Israel's renewed offensive on the war-ravaged enclave.
Their ambulances immediately came under a barrage of gunfire that went on for more than five minutes with brief pauses.
Minutes later, soldiers opened fire at a U-N car that stopped at the scene.
The incident drew widespread international condemnation.
Among those alleging war crimes is Raed Al-Nams, Media Director at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
IN LANGUAGE (Arabic) TRANSLATED: "These are considered crimes against humanity and war crimes. The international community must intervene to stop and compel Israel to respect international conventions and the rules of international humanitarian law, which prohibit the targeting of providers of health services and ambulances during war and conflict."
But Israel's military investigation fell entirely short of that analysis, instead identifying several professional failures, breaches of orders and a failure to fully report the incident.
The Palestine Red Crescent has denounced the report as full of lies, invalid, and unacceptable.
Those killed included eight Red Crescent staff members, six from the Gaza civil defence rescue agency, and one employee of UNRWA, the U-N agency for Palestinian refugees.
Their bodies were found about a week later in Rafah's Tal al-Sultan area – in what the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has described as a mass grave.
This is the Head of the Emergency Ambulance Department in Rafah, Bassem Moussa.
IN LANGUAGE (Arabic) TRANSLATED: "The teams were able to enter through coordination with the international organisations, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. Our martyrs and young men were recovered by the emergency ambulance teams of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and our colleagues in the Civil Defence. They found them in a hole, executed - they will killed and buried in a hole next to their destroyed cars."
Dr Younis al-Khatib, President of the Palestine Red Crescent in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has said an autopsy of the victims revealed they were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.
He also said some of the bodies had been found handcuffed.
"We have a recording of a conversation in Hebrew between the Israeli soldiers and the crew (medics, responders who were killed). Or they might have been injured, they might have been... but for sure they were alive when they were under Israeli control of the soldiers. That's a proof that they were alive. They are not anymore."
The Israeli military has rejected allegations of summary executions and denied that of any of the deceased were bound before or after the shooting.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed that one of the surviving paramedics, Assad al-Nsasrah, was taken to an Israeli place of detention.
His wife, Nafila Nsasrah, told the B-B-C she's anxiously waiting for news.
IN LANGUAGE (Arabic) TRANSLATED: "When we heard Assad was detained we were slightly relieved but we don't know what prison he was taken to or how he is being treated. So, we are still very worried."
After the incident, the army said its soldiers had fired on what it called terrorists approaching them in suspicious vehicles.
A spokesman later added that the vehicles had their lights off.
But a video recovered from the mobile phone of one of the murdered aid workers, released by the Red Crescent, has disproved the Israeli military's account.
That footage clearly shows ambulances travelling with their headlights on and emergency lights flashing.
A spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent, Nebal Farsakh, says accountability should never require video evidence.
"It should not take global outrage for the truth to be acknowledged. The truth was always there—the Palestine Red Crescent medics were wearing their Red Crescent emblem, they were wearing their uniforms and they were driving ambulances that were clearly marked and all emergency lights were on."
The military investigation found a deputy battalion commander to have acted under the incorrect assumption that all the ambulances belonged to Hamas militants, partly due to what he described as poor night visibility.
He's since been dismissed for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief.
