A Palestinian medic who has been missing for almost three weeks since a deadly attack by Israeli troops on a convoy of emergency vehicles in the Gaza Strip is being detained by Israel, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday.
The ICRC “received information” that Assad al-Nassasra was being held “in an Israeli place of detention,” chief spokesperson Christian Cardon said in a statement Wednesday.
He added that the organization had informed Nassasra’s family along with his employer, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).
The PRCS said Monday in a post on X that until it was informed by the ICRC that Nassasra was alive, “his fate had remained unknown since he was targeted along with other PRCS medics in Rafah.”
The Israel Defense Forces would not confirm if Nassasra was in its custody when asked about his whereabouts by NBC News.
The Israeli military has been widely criticized after it walked back its account of the incident March 23, which saw 15 Palestinian paramedics and emergency workers killed.
The IDF — having initially said that its soldiers opened fire as the vehicles approached its position “suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals, killing what it described as nine Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants — later changed its account after contradicting video of the incident emerged.
Recovered from the phone of one of the paramedics killed, the footage which has been reviewed by NBC News shows an ambulance with its lights on and its emergency lights flashing.
The vehicle was also marked with the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s insignia. Lights on two other vehicles can also be seen flashing when soldiers opened fire on the convoy.
The bodies of the killed workers were found buried in a mass grave in the southern Gaza Strip a week later.
Autopsy reports for 14 of the 15 people killed revealed that they had died mainly from gunshots to the head or chest, according to The New York Times, which obtained the results and published the findings Wednesday.
It did not obtain the autopsy result for one United Nations worker who was also killed.
The reports showed that four had been shot in the head, while at least six were shot in their chests or backs, the newspaper reported, adding that 11 had gunshot wounds and had been shot multiple times.
All 14 had been wearing either part of or their whole Red Crescent or Civil Defense uniforms at the time they were killed, the Times reported citing the reports about the autopsies. The autopsies were carried out between April 1 and April 5 by Ahmad Dhair, the forensic head of the Health Ministry in Gaza.
Norwegian pathologist Arne Stray-Pedersen, who had been in Gaza earlier in March, subsequently reviewed photos of the autopsies and consulted with Dhair to write the summary report, the Times reported.
NBC News has not been able to view the autopsy reports.
The IDF did not comment on the reported autopsy findings but said in a statement to NBC News on Wednesday that the incident had been “transferred to the General Staff’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism for investigation.”
Meanwhile, Cardon of the ICRC said the organization had not been granted access to Nassasra or any other Palestinian detainees since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 which saw 1,200 killed and around 250 people taken hostage, according to Israeli counts, marking a major escalation in a decadeslong conflict.
More than 51,000 people have been killed in the Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip since then, according health officials in the enclave, which has been run by Hamas since 2007.
“The ICRC continues to call for access to all places of detention and reiterates publicly and privately that all detainees must always be treated humanely and with dignity,” Cardon said.
