olusegun Ariyo
United Nations officials said the bodies of eight Red Crescent medics and other Palestinian rescue workers who came under fire more than a week ago have been recovered from a grave in the sand in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Head of the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said on X on Monday that the bodies had been discarded in shallow graves, a profound violation of human dignity.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a statement late on Sunday, said it was appalled at the deaths.
“Their bodies were identified today and have been recovered for dignified burial. These staff and volunteers were risking their own lives to provide support to others,” it said.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC, one worker from the nine-strong Red Crescent group was still unaccounted for.
It, however, did not immediately comment on the details of the site where the bodies were found.
The group were said to have gone missing on March 23, after Israel resumed an all-out offensive against Hamas earlier this month.
The Palestine Red Crescent said it also recovered the bodies of six civil defence members and one UN employee from the same area, adding that Israeli forces had targeted the workers.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said on Monday that an inquiry had found that on March 23, troops opened fire on a group of vehicles that included ambulances and fire trucks when the vehicles approached a position without prior coordination and headlights or emergency signals.
It said several militants belonging to the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad were killed.
“The IDF condemns the repeated use of civilian infrastructure by the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, including the use of medical facilities and ambulances for terrorist purposes,” it said in a statement.
