Monday, March 31, 2025

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER WAR  CRIME

Red Cross 'outraged' by killing of medics in Gaza as Macron calls on Netanyahu to stop bombing

The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday it had recovered the bodies of 15 rescuers, including eight of its medics, who were killed a week ago when Israeli forces targeted ambulances in the Gaza Strip. The international Red Cross federation said it was "outraged" by the medics' deaths.

Issued on: 30/03/2025
By: FRANCE 24
A file photo showing Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers handing water to drivers waiting to cross an Israeli army checkpoint in Beit Furik east of Nablus, on March 26, 2025, during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan. © Zain Jaafar, AFP


The Red Cross federation voiced outrage Sunday after eight medical colleagues were killed while on duty in the Gaza Strip, asking: "When will this stop?"

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said earlier Sunday it had recovered the bodies of the medics, killed a week ago when Israeli forces fired on ambulances in southern Gaza.

The PRCS said the bodies were found along with those of six members of Gaza's civil defence agency and one UN agency employee. One Red Crescent ambulance officer remains missing.

"The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is outraged at the deaths of eight medics from PRCS, killed on duty in Gaza," the world's largest humanitarian network said in a statement.

Gazans outside a hospital in the territory's south after the Red Crescent announced the deaths of formerly missing rescuers © - / AFP

The IFRC said the bodies were retrieved after "seven days of silence" and of having access denied to the area of Rafah where they were last seen.

"I am heartbroken," IFRC secretary general Jagan Chapagain said in a statement.

"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."

He stressed that under the rules of International Humanitarian Law, civilians, humanitarians and health services must be protected.

"Instead of another call on all parties to protect and respect humanitarians and civilians, I pose a question: when will this stop?

"All parties must stop the killing."

The IFRC said it was the single most deadly attack on its colleagues anywhere in the world since 2017.

The number of PRCS volunteers and staff killed since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023 is now 30, the global federation said.
Israel's bombing campaign continues

Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on a house and tent sheltering displaced Palestinians killed at least eight people on Sunday, including five children.

The strike hit Khan Younis on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

French President Emmanuel Macron urged Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu to "put an end to the strikes on Gaza and return to the ceasefire", adding in a post on X after a phone call with the Israeli leader that "humanitarian aid must be delivered again immediately".

Samah Dahliz, 38, whose young relative was among the dead, said: "What kind of Eid is this that we are going through?"

"He's a child, his parents had bought him new clothes for Eid to make him happy," she told AFP.

"They bombed them in their tent while they were sleeping."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)



Israel admits firing at ambulances and fire trucks during Gaza offensive

The Israeli army on Saturday admitted its troops had opened fire on “suspicious vehicles” in the Gaza Strip that turned out to be “ambulances and fire trucks” during an offensive launched earlier this month. Hamas has condemned the attack and accused Israel of committing a war crime.


Issued on: 29/03/2025 
By: FRANCE 24

Palestinians inspect the damage at an ambulance repair yard that was hit by Israeli strikes in the central Gaza Strip on March 24, 2025. © Eyad Baba, AFP


Israel's military admitted Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as "suspicious vehicles", with Hamas condemning it as a "war crime" that killed at least one person.

The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.

Israeli troops launched an offensive there on March 20, two days after the army resumed aerial bombardments of Gaza following an almost two-month-long truce.

Read moreIsrael expands Gaza ground offensive into Rafah as missiles intercepted


Israeli troops had "opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists", the military said in a statement to AFP.

"A few minutes afterward, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the troops ... The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists."

The military did not say if there was fire coming from the vehicles.

It added that "after an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the suspicious vehicles ... were ambulances and fire trucks", and condemned "the repeated use" by "terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip of ambulances for terrorist purposes".

The day after the incident, Gaza's civil defence agency said in a statement that it had not heard from a team of six rescuers from Tal al-Sulta who had been urgently dispatched to respond to deaths and injuries.

On Friday, it reported finding the body of the team leader and the rescue vehicles – an ambulance and a firefighting vehicle – and said a vehicle from the Palestine Red Crescent Society was also "reduced to a pile of scrap metal".


Basem Naim, a member of Hamas's political bureau, accused Israel of carrying out "a deliberate and brutal massacre against Civil Defense and Palestinian Red Crescent teams in the city of Rafah".

"The targeted killing of rescue workers – who are protected under international humanitarian law – constitutes a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime," he said.

Tom Fletcher, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that since March 18, "Israeli airstrikes in densely populated areas have killed hundreds of children and other civilians".

"Patients killed in their hospital beds. Ambulances shot at. First responders killed," he said in a statement.

"If the basic principles of humanitarian law still count, the international community must act while it can to uphold them."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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