Since last week, nine members of the Red Crescent crew have gone missing following an incident involving Israeli fire in Rafah. The president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has strongly condemned Israel for targeting their paramedics while they were carrying out their humanitarian mission. During a news conference in Ramallah, occupied West Bank, Younis al-Khatib stated that the search for the missing team members in Gaza is ongoing. The PRCS lost contact with a crew on March 23 after they came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah. Al-Khatib emphasized that these missing individuals are not just numbers, and the international community would have taken action if such an incident occurred anywhere else. He also mentioned that a rescue team, with the assistance of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), managed to retrieve the body of a crew member who had been buried. However, the rescue teams were unable to determine if the remaining crew members were still alive. Al-Khatib suggested that there are different scenarios, including the possibility that they might have been killed or detained by Israeli forces. Last week, the Israeli military stated that they had fired on ambulances and fire trucks, labeling them as “suspicious vehicles,” which arrived at a scene where they were conducting attacks. Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, strongly condemned the attack on the ambulance, stating that targeting rescue workers, who are protected under international humanitarian law, constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime. Tom Fletcher, the chief of OCHA, reported that since Israel broke the ceasefire in Gaza on March 18, Israeli air attacks have targeted densely populated areas, resulting in patients being killed in their hospital beds, ambulances being shot at, and first responders losing their lives. The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that at least 921 people have been killed since Israel resumed its attacks, adding to the more than 50,000 killed since October 7, 2023. The conflict between Israel and Hamas began when Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in 1,139 deaths and approximately 250 people being taken captive into Gaza.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/30/palestine-red-crescent-says-missing-gaza-crew-either-dead-or-detained?traffic_source=rss