RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories (AFP)— 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”.

Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir meanwhile ordered a more in-depth investigation into the attack after an initial probe was completed by the military.

The killings occurred in the southern Gaza Strip on March 23, days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory. They have since sparked international condemnation, with Israel insisting there were militants in the ambulances.

The PRCS announcement came as Hamas and rescuers said an Israeli strike on southern Gaza killed one journalist and wounded nine others, while the Israeli military reported it targeted a militant posing as a reporter.

The journalist is one of at least 12 people killed in Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory on Monday, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency, as the war entered its 19th month.

Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told journalists in Ramallah that an autopsy of the humanitarian personnel slain in March revealed that “all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill”.

He called for an international probe into the killings.

“We call on the world to form an independent and impartial international commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the deliberate killing of the ambulance crews in the Gaza Strip,” Khatib said.

Army chief Zamir ordered a more in-depth investigation in the attack.

“The Chief of Staff has instructed a deeper investigation to be conducted and completed in the coming days,” the military said in a statement.

“The preliminary inquiry indicated that the troops opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area.”

The Israeli military has previously said its soldiers fired on “terrorists” approaching them in “suspicious vehicles”, with a spokesman later adding that the vehicles had their lights off.

But a video recovered from the cellphone of one of the slain aid workers, released by the Red Crescent, appears to contradict the Israeli military’s account.

The footage shows ambulances travelling with their headlights on and emergency lights flashing.

– Journalist killed –
Eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Gaza civil defence agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugee were killed in the incident, 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.

“Why did you hide the bodies?” Khatib said of the Israeli forces involved in the attack.

An Israeli air strike on Monday hit a tent used by journalists in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, killing two people and wounding nine journalists, Gaza’s civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

The Hamas government media office said journalist Hilmi al-Faqaawi, who worked for a local news agency, was killed in the attack.

The Israeli military meanwhile said it had “struck the Hamas terrorist Hassan Abdel Fattah Mohammed Aslih in the Khan Yunis area” overnight, without specifying whether he had been killed.

The military claimed Aslih operated “under the guise of a journalist” and had taken part in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The Hamas government media office and the Palestinian Journalists Protection Center named Aslih among the nine wounded in the Khan Yunis strike.

– ‘War crimes’ –
Addressing the killing of the rescuers in March, an Israeli military official, briefing journalists over the weekend on condition of anonymity, said troops first fired at a vehicle carrying members of Hamas internal security forces, killing two and detaining another.

Two hours later, at 6:00 am on March 23, the soldiers “received a report from the aerial coverage that there is a convoy moving in the dark in a suspicious way towards them” and “opened fire from far”, said the official.

“They thought they had an encounter with terrorists.”

According to OCHA the first team, which it said comprised rescuers and not Hamas militants, was hit by Israeli forces at dawn.

In the hours that followed, additional rescue and aid teams searching for their colleagues were also struck, OCHA said.

On Monday, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said that among the 15 killed were six Hamas militants.

“What were Hamas terrorists doing in ambulances?” he said.

Khatib dismissed the accusation, saying Israel has failed “to prove even once in 50 years that the Red Crescent or its crews carry or use weapons”.