Video shows last moments for slain Gaza aid workers, Red Crescent says

GAZA CITY, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — A video recovered from the cellphone of an aid worker killed in Gaza alongside other rescuers shows their final moments, according to the Palestine Red Crescent, with clearly marked ambulances and emergency lights flashing as heavy gunfire erupts.

The aid worker was among 15 humanitarian personnel killed on March 23 in an attack by Israeli forces, according to the United Nations and the Palestine Red Crescent Society [PRCS].

The Israeli military has said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, insisting they fired on "terrorists" approaching them in "suspicious vehicles".

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said that troops opened fire on vehicles that had no prior clearance from Israeli authorities and had their lights off.

But the video released by PRCS on Saturday appears to contradict the Israeli military's claims, showing ambulances travelling with their headlights on and emergency lights flashing.

The video, six minutes and 42 seconds long and apparently filmed from inside a moving vehicle, captures a red firetruck and ambulances driving through the night amid constant automatic gunfire. 

The vehicles stop beside another on the roadside, and two uniformed men exit. Moments later, intense gunfire erupts.

In the video, the voices of two medics are heard, one saying, "the vehicle, the vehicle," and another responding: "It seems to be an accident."

Seconds later, a volley of gunfire breaks out, and the screen goes black.

PRCS said it had found the video on the phone of Rifat Radwan, one of the deceased aid workers.

"This video unequivocally refutes the occupation's claims that Israeli forces did not randomly target ambulances, and that some vehicles had approached suspiciously without lights or emergency markings," PRCS said in a statement.

"The footage exposes the truth and dismantles this false narrative."

Those killed included eight PRCS staff, six members of the Gaza civil defence agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA.

Their bodies were found buried near Rafah in what the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [OCHA] described as a mass grave.