A man walks amids the rubble of a building as Palestinian rescuers work at the site of an Israeli strike on a residential area in Gaza City's Shujaiyya neighbourhood, on April 9, 2025. AFP
Adrian Zimmermann, head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza, said in a post published by the ICRC on Wednesday that this incident should be a true turning point since humanitarian and medical workers are protected under international humanitarian law, which must be respected in all circumstances so they can carry out their work safely — unhindered and unharmed.
"Every time a paramedic is killed, a lifeline is cut off for civilians. We continue to feel pain and anger over the killing of Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedics, many of whom worked with us in the Red Cross field hospital and other hospitals in Gaza, along with other civil defense first responders," Zimmermann stated.
"Every day brings a new memory of their loss, and we are deeply concerned by the horrific scenes depicting the circumstances of their deaths," he continued.
It's worth noting that the Israeli occupation forces targeted and martyred the eight paramedics late last month while they were performing their humanitarian duty.
The fallen medics were heading to the Hashashin area in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, to provide first aid to some people injured by Israeli shelling in the area.
On Monday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society confirmed that the 15 medics and rescuers killed by Israeli forces last month in Gaza were shot in the upper body with "intent to kill.”
"There has been an autopsy of the martyrs from the Red Crescent and civil defence teams. We cannot disclose everything we know, but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill," Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Palestine Red Crescent in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told journalists in Ramallah.
Khatib called for an international probe into the killings, which the Israeli military has separately announced it was investigating.
"We call on the world to form an independent and impartial international commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the deliberate killing of the ambulance crews in the Gaza Strip," he added.
On 18 March, Israel unilaterally ended a two-month truce with Hamas, resuming its genocidal war on the strip.
Since then, the Israeli army has killed at least 1,391 people, raising the overall Palestinian death toll since 7 October 2023 to 50,752, mostly women and children.
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