A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: Israel's military says it uncovered, quote, "professional failures" by its soldiers in the killing of more than a dozen Palestinian medical professionals last month in the war in Gaza. The report on the incident was released yesterday. NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi joins us now from Tel Aviv. So the killing of the 15 medical professionals occurred last month. What do we know about what happened?
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: Right. So we know that on March 23, a group of Israeli soldiers who were conducting an operation in Rafah in Southern Gaza, shot at a fire truck and some ambulances that stopped on a road near them and they killed 15 Palestinian medics and emergency workers. The soldiers then dug a mass grave, buried the bodies in them and bulldozed over the vehicles.
And then the grave was found a week later. So the Israeli military tried to explain that the rescue vehicles had approached the troops suspiciously without any lights on. And so the soldiers felt under threat and they started shooting. But then earlier this month, a video was found on the body of one of the killed medics and it showed that the rescue vehicles were actually clearly marked.
They were driving slowly and they had emergency lights on and flashing red lights. And that's when the Israeli military walked back its original account and launched an investigation.
MARTÍNEZ: And Israel's military released the findings of that investigation. You were at the press briefing yesterday. What did they say?
AL-SHALCHI: So at first they said that the field commander who ordered the shooting was wearing night goggles, but had, quote, "poor night visibility." The spokespeople repeatedly stressed to us, you know, think about the mindset of these soldiers at war. They believe the Palestinian medics were members of Hamas, and so they started firing. We were also told that six of the 15 medics killed were Hamas members.
Now, Israel has always maintained that Hamas uses ambulances to transport and hide militants. But in this case, they didn't really show us any evidence and no weapons were found in the vehicles. The investigator said that crushing the rescue vehicles was wrong, but burying the bodies in the mass grave was reasonable.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Fifteen medics were killed. Any survivors at all? Any eyewitnesses?
AL-SHALCHI: Yeah, actually. NPR spoke to Munzer Abed, a 27-year-old paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent, who was in one of the ambulances.
MUNZER ABED: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: He said he was thankful that his colleague's video was found. He denied that he or any of them were Hamas militants and he says that the Israeli military tried to cover up their crime. The Israeli investigators said they didn't find any evidence of unethical conduct by the soldiers.
MARTÍNEZ: What about any consequences for the soldiers involved in the killings?
AL-SHALCHI: Well, the brigade's commander is getting a reprimand and the field commander who ordered the shooting is being dismissed from his position. But the lead Israeli investigator defended the soldiers, said that he had acted reasonably, and then we pressed the spokespeople. How are you going to make sure that this doesn't happen again? They said, well, all of this was, quote, "an operational misunderstanding."
They said, we trust in the good intentions of our soldiers and there are mechanisms to keep this from happening and they already exist. And then last night, the spokesperson for the U.N.'s Gaza humanitarian response who knew some of the medics, said that the investigation wasn't enough and that a, quote, "lack of real accountability undermines international law and makes the world a more dangerous place."
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi in Tel Aviv. Thank you very much.
AL-SHALCHI: You're welcome.
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