21Killing of 15 emergency workers in Rafah
- Fifteen rescue workers killed “one by one,” then buried with their crushed ambulances.
- The recovered phone video showed flashing emergency lights — the army's story said there were none.
- A week in a shallow mass grave before anyone was allowed to reach them.
On 23 March 2025, Israeli forces in Tel al-Sultan, Rafah, killed 15 emergency workers — eight Palestine Red Crescent paramedics, six Civil Defence members and a UN staffer — whose bodies were recovered a week later from a shallow mass grave alongside their crushed ambulances, with UN OCHA official Jonathan Whittall saying they were struck "one by one". Mobile-phone video recovered from paramedic Rifaat Radwan, verified and published by the New York Times and shown by the Red Crescent at the UN, showed the ambulances' emergency lights flashing — contradicting the IDF's initial claim that the vehicles advanced suspiciously without lights — and an IDF inquiry released on 20 April 2025 acknowledged "professional failures", dismissing the deputy battalion commander involved.
The record — 13 sources
Date, publication and headline for each source, as the source itself published them. Forensic Architecture is pinned first; the rest by publication date. 12 of 13 dated; a blank means the publisher's page didn't expose it, and we don't guess.