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The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Sunday it had recovered the bodies of 14 rescuer workers, including eight of its own staff, who went missing in southern Gaza more than a week ago after being attacked by Israeli forces.
Five of the bodies were members of Gaza's civil defence and one was a UN worker, PRCS spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh said on the agency's WhatsApp channel.
The search was conducted by the PRCS, along with Gaza's civil defence, the Red Cross and the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ms Farsakh said. One PRCS member remains unaccounted for and "is believed to have been arrested", the agency added.
"The bodies were recovered with difficulty as they were buried in the sand, with some showing signs of decomposition," Ms Farsakh said.
The PRCS said its workers went missing on the morning of March 23, when an ambulance was sent into Rafah after overnight Israeli attacks. When the ambulance crew reported being injured in Israeli fire, the agency said it sent three more ambulances to assist them. Contact with all of the crews was lost.
Missing Red Crescent personnel
The discovery of the bodies came hours after PRCS president Dr Younis Al Khatib held a press conference to plead for the international community to put pressure on Israel to allow the agency to look for its missing personnel.
“There was a contact between the crews and Israeli soldiers,” Dr Al Khatib said at the PRCS headquarters in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. "We know there was then a dialogue in Hebrew.”
Some members of the team, who he said were travelling in clearly marked vehicles, were “injured but alive” after the attack, he added.
A team from Gaza’s civil defence that was in the Tel Al Sultan area of Rafah at the time of the violence also went missing. The body of one member, head of the Rafah civil defence Anwar Al Attar, was recovered on Friday.
“Obstructing our teams from reaching the scene has one explanation: what happened there is beyond just attacking missions, there is a clear massacre that took place on civilians in the area,” Dr Al Khatib said.
Israel's military admitted on Saturday that it fired at ambulances after identifying them as "suspicious vehicles”. Israeli troops "opened fire towards Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists", it said in a statement.
"A few minutes afterwards, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously towards the troops," it added. "The troops responded by firing towards the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.”
The military did not say whether there was gunfire coming from the vehicles.
"After an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the suspicious vehicles ... were ambulances and fire trucks," it said. It criticised militants in Gaza for "the repeated use" of ambulances "for terrorist purposes".
Israel has increased its military operations in Gaza after it broke a ceasefire agreed to with Hamas in January. More than 50,520 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, health authorities in the enclave said.
