Monther Abed, a volunteer paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent, is the only survivor of the Israeli massacre in Rafah. (Photo: via social media)
Monther Abed, the sole survivor of the Israeli attack on paramedics in Rafah, reveals the details of the crime in which 15 humanitarian workers were killed.
Originally published in Palestine Chronicle.
Monther Abed, a volunteer paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent, remembers in detail the Israeli army’s crime when they targeted him and his colleagues in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, on March 23, 2025.
In this horrific massacre, 15 members of the paramedic and civil defense teams, protected by international law, were murdered by the Israeli occupation forces, who have been carrying out a genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza for the past 18 months.
Abed, the sole survivor of the massacre, recounted the attack when they responded to distress calls from civilian casualties trapped by Israeli forces in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in the western part of Rafah.
A team consisting of 10 paramedics, five civil defense personnel, and an employee from one of the UN agencies headed to the source of the distress calls, hoping to save civilian lives.
Under Attack
Abed, in his thirties, told Anadolu Agency: “We received a signal about injuries in the Hashashin area (in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood), so we immediately moved. The ambulances were from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (Ambulance 101), and they were illuminated both inside and outside.”
He continued,
“As soon as we arrived, we were subjected to intense and direct gunfire. I had to duck down inside the ambulance at the back. I didn’t hear anything from my colleagues, just their final gasps. Then a special Israeli force arrived, opened the ambulance door, and spoke in Hebrew. They pushed my head to the ground so I wouldn’t see my colleagues or know their fate.”
After the gunfire on the ambulances, Israeli soldiers pulled Abed from the wreckage, arrested him, blindfolded him, and interrogated him for 15 hours before releasing him.
Abed revealed that he had been severely tortured, saying,
“They beat me with rifle butts and tortured me, asking about my name, address, and details about my presence on October 7. The more I answered, the more they beat me. I wished for death from the pain of the torture.”
The sole survivor confirmed that the occupation forces used military bulldozers to dig at the site. He saw them digging a hole on one side and three others on the other side, where they buried the ambulances and civil defense vehicles after shooting the people inside.
On March 27 and 30, Gaza authorities announced that they had found the bodies of 15 members of the paramedic and firefighting team buried in an area about 200 meters from where their vehicles had stopped.
The evidence showed that the victims were shot, with some found bound at the wrists.
Israeli Claims vs. Reality
On March 31, the Israeli army claimed that its forces did not attack the ambulances and firefighting vehicles “randomly,” but instead fired at “vehicles that approached suspiciously without activating emergency lights.”
They also claimed that the operation resulted in the killing of members of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades and the Islamic Jihad Movement.
However, Abed completely denied these claims, asserting that the area was not a military operation zone but a civilian area with non-combatants. He emphasized that what the Israeli army did was “a crime against humanity” that they tried to cover up by burying the humanitarian team and their vehicles to erase the evidence.
On Saturday evening, the Israeli army backtracked on its claims and acknowledged the crime of killing the paramedics and firefighters in Rafah. This came under the pressure of a shocking video taken by one of the paramedics with his mobile phone before his death, which was published by The New York Times.
The Israeli army claimed that an initial investigation concluded that the ambulance and civil defense teams approached a vehicle belonging to Hamas when entering Tel al-Sultan, and the soldiers believed it posed a threat, so they opened fire. They denied that the relief workers were executed after being bound.
They also claimed that a military bulldozer covered the bodies and vehicles with sand due to “ongoing fighting” and tried to justify the crime by calling it a “standard procedure in the southern region to prevent animals from tampering with the bodies.” Meanwhile, thousands of bodies of civilians, including children, women, and the elderly, were left for dogs to tear apart in other areas of Gaza.
The Israeli army denied that the bodies of the victims had been damaged, despite the fact that “the video documenting the digging at the site where the bodies were buried shows that they were in very bad condition, with some of them disfigured,” according to Haaretz newspaper.
The Israeli newspaper reported that the Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, directed the investigation mechanism in the General Staff, responsible for examining cases suspected of war crimes, to investigate the incident. It confirmed that “since the beginning of the war, information about dozens of cases has been transferred to this mechanism, but no soldiers have been prosecuted as a result.”
Ongoing Genocide
The renewed Israeli violence on March 18 has broken a ceasefire that began on January 19. The latest military actions have killed hundreds of Palestinians and injured many more, primarily civilians, including women and children.
While the violations have been condemned by numerous countries and human rights groups, the US has continued its support for Israel, asserting that the military campaign was carried out with prior knowledge and approval from Washington.
Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and left Gaza in ruins.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in the besieged enclave.
A study in The Lancet estimates that unilateral sanctions have caused as much death as wars, with an estimated half a million deaths per year.
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