Hamas Accuses Israel of Summary Executions in Deaths of Rescue Workers

Hamas-controlled authorities today accused the Israeli army of summary executions in March during clashes in which 15 Palestinian aid workers died in the southern Gaza Strip.

On March 23, a few days after the offensive in the Gaza Strip resumed, Israeli troops fired on Civil Defense and Red Crescent rescue teams in Rafah, in the south of the Palestinian enclave.

Israel claims that six Hamas members were inside the ambulances that were targeted by gunfire.

The Palestinian Civil Defense, a body controlled by Hamas, concluded today the investigation into the facts that contradict the conclusions of the investigation published on Sunday by the Israeli Army.

Mohammed Al-Moughair, head of civil defense in Gaza, told Agence France Presse that the footage captured by one of the ambulance drivers showed that Israel had carried out "summary executions."

A military inquiry, whose findings were published by the Israeli army on Sunday, said there was professional misconduct, disobedience and "misunderstandings" among Israeli soldiers at the scene but rejected allegations of foul play.

Although the Army announced the dismissal of an officer who commanded troops on the ground that day, an investigation concluded that soldiers did not fire indiscriminately and no evidence was uncovered to support allegations of execution.

The victims were eight members of the Red Crescent, six members of the Gaza Civil Defense and one member of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

The bodies were found several days after the shooting, buried in sand in what the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described as a mass grave.

The Palestine Red Crescent has already rejected the Israeli inquiry's findings.

"(...) The report is full of lies, it is null and void because it justifies the deaths and attributes responsibility for the incident to a personal error by commanders on the ground, when the truth is quite different," the organization's spokesperson in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, Nebal Farsakh, told AFP.

The events sparked international outrage, with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk referring to a possible war crime.