The Israeli army executed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers in the Gaza Strip and buried them in a mass grave

Soldiers from the Golani Brigade, one of the Israeli army’s five infantry brigades, opened fire on two convoys of Palestinian ambulances and rescue vehicles in Rafah on March 23, 2025, and dug a mass grave to cover the bodies of the dead. A UN team was able to retrieve the bodies six days later. The allegations of two witnesses who exhumed the bodies were denied, as were the published autopsy results, which showed that many of the dead had been shot at close range in the head and chest and had been found with their hands or feet bound.

In a press release, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor described the crime, which occurred on Sunday morning, March 23, 2025, as “the largest mass execution of humanitarian workers in the history of modern warfare.”

The Israeli army unit implicated in the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers in the Gaza Strip is under the command of the infamous 14th Armored Brigade, which some of its soldiers have previously accused of “contempt for human life.”

The Golani Forces are under the command of the 14th Armored Reserve Brigade. The 14th Brigade is part of the 252nd Division, commanded by Brigadier General Yehuda Wach since early August 2024.

Former officers say Brigadier General Wach designated an unofficial “killing zone” elsewhere in the Strip, leading to arbitrary killings of Palestinian civilians. Many crimes against Palestinians are committed in the Netzarim axis.

According to an investigation conducted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Brigadier General Wach told soldiers after ordering them to prevent aid trucks from entering Gaza: “There are no innocent people in Gaza.”

Yehuda Wach, born in 1979 in the Kiryat Arba settlement in Hebron, has previously been accused of war crimes committed during the conflict, including the killing of civilians, degrading treatment of corpses, unjustified destruction of civilian infrastructure, and incitement to genocide.

Human rights organizations have long accused the Israeli military of a culture of impunity, with only a handful of soldiers being prosecuted. In 2023, less than 1% of complaints filed against the actions of Israeli forces in the occupied Palestinian territories resulted in a conviction, according to the latest annual report by the US State Department on human rights.

Earlier this week, the Palestine Red Crescent Society called for an international investigation into the incident, which was the deadliest for members of the International Committee of the Red Cross since six workers were shot dead in a 2017 ISIS ambush in Afghanistan.