4 months ago
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JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli probe into the killings of 15 Palestinian medics past period successful Gaza by Israeli forces said Sunday it has recovered “professional failures” and a lawman commandant volition beryllium fired.
Israel astatine archetypal claimed that the medics' vehicles did not person exigency signals connected erstwhile troops opened occurrence but aboriginal backtracked. Cellphone video recovered from 1 of the medics contradicted Israel’s archetypal account.
The subject probe recovered that the lawman battalion commander, “due to mediocre nighttime visibility,” assessed that the ambulances belonged to Hamas militants. Video footage obtained from the incidental shows the ambulances had lights flashing.
Eight Red Crescent personnel, six Civil Defense workers and a U.N. staffer were killed successful the shooting earlier dawn connected March 23 by troops conducting operations successful Tel al-Sultan, a territory of the confederate Gaza metropolis of Rafah. Troops past bulldozed implicit the bodies on with their mangled vehicles, burying them successful a wide grave. U.N. and rescue workers were lone capable to scope the tract a week aboriginal to excavation retired the bodies.
The caput of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has said the slain men were “targeted astatine adjacent range.”
The Israeli subject probe said the Palestinians were killed owed to an “operational misunderstanding” by Israeli forces, and that a abstracted incidental 15 minutes later, erstwhile Israeli soldiers changeable astatine a Palestinian U.N. vehicle, was a breach of orders.
The probe recovered that the determination to crush the ambulances was incorrect but denied that determination was an effort to conceal the event.
“The introspection recovered nary grounds to enactment claims of execution oregon that immoderate of the deceased were bound earlier oregon aft the shooting," it added.
Israel has accused Hamas of moving and hiding its fighters wrong ambulances and exigency vehicles, arsenic good arsenic successful hospitals and different civilian infrastructure, arguing that justifies strikes connected them. Medical unit mostly contradict the accusations.
