Gaza medic missing in Israeli ambulance attack 'forcibly abducted': Red Crescent
AFP , Sunday 13 Apr 2025
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Sunday that a medic who had been missing since an Israeli attack on ambulances in Gaza was "forcibly abducted" by troops and is being held by Israeli authorities.
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"We have been informed by the International Committee of the Red Cross that medic Asaad al-Nsasrah is being held by the Israeli occupation authorities," the PRCS said in a statement.
"His fate had remained unknown since he was targeted along with other PRCS medics in Rafah," it said, referring to the attack that left 15 medics and rescuers dead.
"We call on the international community to pressure the occupation authorities to immediately release our colleague, medic Asaad, who was forcibly abducted while carrying out his humanitarian duties," the PRCS said.
"He and his colleagues came under heavy gunfire, which led to the killing of eight of them -- a grave violation of international humanitarian law."
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Monday that 15 medics and rescuers killed by Israeli forces last month in Gaza were shot in the upper body with "intent to kill."
The killings occurred in the southern Gaza Strip on 23 March, days into a renewed Israeli war on Gaza, and have since sparked international condemnation.
Eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Gaza civil defence agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were killed in the attack, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA and Palestinian rescuers.
Their bodies were found buried near the site of the shooting in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah city, in what OCHA described as a mass grave.
The team was ambushed while responding to distress calls from Palestinians in an area near Rafah that had been struck by an Israeli air strike, the PRCS had said.
The Israeli attack appears to have occurred in two phases that morning.
One of the victims of the attack, medic Rifaat Radwan, captured video and audio of the second assault, which targeted his convoy of ambulances and a firetruck, before he was killed.
An Israeli military official told journalists that the soldiers who fired at the ambulances "thought they had an encounter with terrorists".
But Radwan's video, released by the Red Crescent, contradicted this account.
The footage from the phone found on Radwan's body shows ambulances moving with their headlights and emergency lights clearly switched on, while the military official had said that the lights on the vehicles were off.
In its 17-month-old war on Gaza, Israel has deliberately struck civilian targets such as schools, hospitals, ambulances, displaced shelters, journalists, and humanitarian workers, killing and wounding thousands.
Standing at the site of the massacre during a 30 March search mission, Jonathan Whittall, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Palestinian territories, described how "the ambulances were hit one by one as they advanced, as they entered into Rafah."
The sole survivor, medic Mundhir Abed, witnessed the first attack.
Abed was in the back of the first ambulance to reach the scene of the airstrike in Rafah's Hashashin district when it came under heavy Israeli fire, according to a report in the Guardian.
"The ambulance's lights were clearly on, and the Red Crescent logo was visible as we headed to the scene," the 27-year-old PRCS volunteer said.
"From the moment the shooting began, I immediately took cover on the floor of the ambulance. I didn't hear anything from my colleagues, except for the sounds of their last moments, hearing them take their last breath," Abed said.
"Suddenly, everything went quiet. The ambulance came to a stop, and the lights went out," he added, noting that he was then detained, beaten by the soldiers, and later released.
"It's a day I'll never forget because of the torment I witnessed and lived through," he told AFP.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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