Palestinian medics have been missing for over one week following Israeli attacks on Gaza [Getty]
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has confirmed that 14 bodies have been recovered in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after its paramedics came under heavy fire from Israeli forces during a rescue operation.
In a statement on Sunday, the PRCS said that eight of the bodies have been identified as Red Crescent medics, five as members of the Civil Defence, and one as an employee of a UN agency. One PRCS first responder and one Civil Defence paramedic remain missing.
“PRCS was devastated today by the loss of eight of our paramedics in Rafah who were targeted by the occupation forces while performing their humanitarian duty, responding to the wounded and injured in the Hashashin area of Rafah,” the organisation said in a post on X.
“The ninth paramedic is still missing and is believed to have been detained.”
The names of the eight PRCS medics killed are: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezzedine Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Rifaat Radwan, Mohammed Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Labda, Mohammed Hilieh, and Raed Al-Sharif.
Earlier on Sunday, PRCS President Younis al-Khatib condemned the targeting of his staff, saying: “Those souls are not mere numbers. If this incident happened anywhere else, the whole world would have moved heaven and earth to expose this war crime.”
He added that two days prior, a joint team from the PRCS and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) was able to reach the site where the medics were last seen and recovered a buried body.
“There are a number of scenarios for what happened… After more than one week of losing communication with our crew – either they have been killed or detained by the Israeli occupation forces.”
The updated toll follows an earlier PRCS announcement confirming that six paramedics had been killed while trying to rescue civilians wounded in Israeli airstrikes. That number has now risen to eight confirmed deaths, with four emergency responders still missing.
The PRCS said its teams were directly targeted by Israeli forces while attending to wounded civilians in Rafah’s Hashashin neighbourhood last week. The group emphasized that its medics were clearly marked with Red Crescent emblems, which are protected under international law.
“The PRCS is shocked by the targeting of its paramedics by the occupying forces while carrying out their humanitarian work,” the group said.
“This emblem is protected under international humanitarian law, which obliges occupying forces to protect medical personnel and allow their missions to proceed unhindered.”
The organisation held Israel “fully responsible” for the fate of its staff and called on the international community to pressure Israel to provide information on the whereabouts of missing medics.
Humanitarian and human rights organisations have condemned the strike, warning that the systematic targeting of aid workers may constitute a war crime.
Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, said the attack represented “a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions”.
Tom Fletcher, head of OCHA, also criticised Israel’s military conduct, noting that since 18 March, Israeli airstrikes have hit densely populated areas, with ambulances shot at, first responders killed, and patients killed in their hospital beds.
The PRCS killings come amid Israel’s continued assault on Gaza, where over 61,700 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Aid workers from organisations including World Central Kitchen and the UK-based Al-Khair Foundation are among those killed in recent Israeli strikes.
