GAZA, (PIC)
The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced the Israeli occupation army for cold-bloodedly killing 14 emergency workers in southern Gaza a few days ago.
“This crime is considered the largest act of collective targeting and deliberate killing of ambulance crews. It underscores that we are facing a criminal and sadistic enemy devoid of any human values and with no respect for the international law, the international humanitarian law, and the Geneva conventions, which guarantee the protection of medical and civil defense responders during conflicts,” Hamas said in a statement on Sunday.
“The criminal Zionist enemy persists in committing the most heinous crimes during its brutal genocidal war on innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip. It systematically and flagrantly violates all laws, relying on disgraceful international silence and political and military support from the US administration, which is complicit in these crimes,” Hamas added.
The Movement called on the entire world to condemn such Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza and take steps to hold Israeli war criminals accountable for their actions.
Gaza’s health ministry said in a statement on Sunday that bodies belonging to eight Red Crescent paramedics, five members of the civil defense, and one person whose identity remains unknown had been recovered from a site in Tel as-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah.
According to the ministry, those emergency responders, who had gone missing for days, had been executed in cold blood and some of them were found with their hands bound.
The ministry added that the bodies of the first responders showed signs of being deliberately targeted. “Some of them were shot in the head and chest, and they were buried in deep holes to prevent them from being found.”
However, Al Jazeera satellite channel said the Red Crescent recovered the bodies of 15 emergency workers, including eight paramedics, six civil defense workers and one UN employee, a week after their vehicles came under fire from Israeli forces near Rafah in southern Gaza.
In this regard, Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) denounced the Israeli execution of 15 first responders in Rafah, calling for an independent international investigation into such a “brutal crime.”
In a statement, GMO accused the Israeli army of cold-bloodedly targeting and killing eight Red Crescent paramedics, six civil defense workers and one UNRWA employee as they were on a humanitarian mission to evacuate civilian casualties from Rafah in southern Gaza after they responded to urgent distress calls.
GMO also accused the Israeli army of preventing ambulance crews from evacuating the bodies of those first responders for eight consecutive days.
GMO pointed to testimonies confirming that some of those victims were physically liquidated and shot in their heads and chests while being handcuffed. “This crime was not random targeting but intentional execution that was carried out under an official directive from the Israeli army.”
GMO held the US administration and European countries complicit in the genocidal war on Gaza, especially Britain, Germany and France, fully responsible for such a “heinous crime.”
“It is a war crime and a full-fledged crime against humanity,” GMO underlined.
