Gaza medic missing since aid workers attack forcibly abducted by Israel says Red Crescent

The Palestinian paramedic, who has been missing since a deadly Israeli attack that killed 15 emergency workers in Rafah last month, is being detained by the Israeli authorities, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.

Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) medic Assad al-Nassasra has been missing since 23 March, when Israeli forces shot dead 15 paramedics and emergency resp0nders while they were on a rescue mission, before burying them underneath their crushed ambulances in a shallow grave.

Witnesses reported that the workers' bodies were recovered still wearing their uniforms, some with their hands bound.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence, reported that at least one of them had his legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless. 

The ICRC said in a statement that it had “received information that the PRCS medic Assad al-Nassasra has been detained in an Israeli place of detention”, but it did not provide information about where he was being held. It confirmed that the Israeli authorities had not granted access to visit him.

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PRCS said that Nassasra had been "forcibly abducted while carrying out his humanitarian duties" by Israeli forces, and called for his immediate release.

The Israeli army has not confirmed his detention, but a spokesperson said that it was aware of the claim of his whereabouts.

Another survivor from the attack, Munther Abed, reported that he had seen Nassasra being led away alive and blindfolded by Israeli officers following the killings.

'Single deadliest attack'

Israeli forces were forced to backtrack on their initial account of the attack, which maintained that soldiers opened fire on vehicles approaching their position in the dark without emergency lights or markings, deeming them "suspicious".

Initially, offficials from the Israeli army falsely claimed that the PRCS vehicles were being used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Video footage recovered from the mobile phone of one of the victims and released by the PRCS contradicted the account.

The video showed emergency workers in uniform, operating clearly marked ambulances and fire trucks with lights on, being fired upon by soldiers.

The killings are the single deadliest attack on Red Cross/Red Crescent workers anywhere in the world since 2017, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

The UN and the Palestinian Red Crescent have called for an independent investigation into the killings.

Officials at the UN said that available information suggests one team was killed by Israeli forces, and other emergency and aid crews were killed one after the other over several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues.

middleeasteye.net