A quadcopter buzzed overhead, blaring the voice of an Israeli official. It directed aid workers to a mound of sand on the eastern side of the road.

This, the voice indicated, is where they would find their missing colleagues.

It had been a week since Israeli soldiers killed them and buried their bodies in a mass grave.

Access to the site had only been granted once before, three days earlier. That dig had turned up a single body – that of Anwar al Attar, buried beneath the crushed remains of his fire engine.

This time, the bodies turned up in quick succession. One-by-one, they were lifted from the grave, placed into white bags and lined up neatly on the road.

By sunset, 14 more bodies had been recovered.

Among them were one UN worker, eight paramedics from Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and, including Attar, six first responders from Civil Defence – the official fire and rescue service of Gaza’s Hamas-led government.

None were armed.

Israel has denied all wrongdoing, saying its troops had reason to suspect the vehicles contained Hamas operatives and that they were later proven right.

Using visual evidence, satellite imagery, audio analysis and interviews with key witnesses, Sky News can present the most comprehensive picture of the incident so far.

Our findings contradict not only Israel’s initial account of the attack, but its subsequent accounts as well.

‘I want to do it in order to help people’

More than 400 aid workers have now been killed in Gaza since the war began. What set the killings of these 15 apart is that their last moments were recorded on video.

Two videos, 19 minutes in total, were found on the phone of 24-year old paramedic Rifaat Radwan – one of the men pulled from the mass grave that day.

They show the terror and chaos of Rifaat’s last moments, and contradict key elements of Israel’s narrative.

“My son was very exhausted from this war,” says Rifaat’s mother, Hajjah. “This should not have been his reward.”

Hajjah remembers the moment her son told her he wanted to become a paramedic.

It was the night of his graduation party, and all the guests had left.

“I want to do it in order to help people,” Rifaat had said.

She called over Rifaat’s father, Anwar, and Rifaat began by reminding him how, from the age of five or six, he had always chased after ambulances in the street.

“This is who Rifaat was,” says Anwar. “He had very beautiful ambitions.”

How Rifaat’s last moments unfolded

Shortly before 5am, Rifaat departed from PRCS’s Rafah headquarters in an ambulance with fellow paramedic Assad al Nsasrah.

The two men, along with another ambulance following behind, had been sent to search for three colleagues who had disappeared while on a rescue mission.

By matching Rifaat’s videos and their metadata to satellite imagery, Sky News has been able to map out the exact route he took.

“They’re lying there, just lying there,” Assad says, as the ambulance comes to a stop. “Quick! It looks like an accident.”

Two other men rush out of the fire engine. Assad pulls the handbrake inside his ambulance.

Three seconds later, a volley of shots ring out. Rifaat jumps out of the ambulance, diving for cover by the side of the road.

For five-and-a-half minutes, Israeli troops continue to fire at the unarmed medics.

As they do so, Rifaat recites the Muslim Shahada – a statement of faith often said before death.

“Mum, forgive me. This is the path I chose, to help people,” Rifaat says towards the end of the video.

“Get up!” a voice shouts in Hebrew, before the recording abruptly ends.

New audio obtained by Sky News

Sky News has obtained exclusive new audio which reveals that the shooting did not end there.

The audio, shared by PRCS, shows a 99-second phone call between the PRCS dispatch centre and Ashraf Abu Labda, one of the paramedics in Saleh Muammar’s ambulance.

PRCS told us the phone call was made at 5.13am, around five minutes after the attack began and shortly before Rifaat’s call ended.

Sky News was not able to match the audio from the two clips, which may have been recorded in different locations.

For the first 33 seconds, Ashraf is heard reciting the Shahada as heavy gunfire continues.

Unintelligible shouting can be heard in the background, as well as the prayers of another aid worker.

Suddenly, the shooting stops and Ashraf falls silent for several seconds.

“There’s soldiers, there’s soldiers,” he says as the gunfire resumes. “The army’s at our location.”

These are his last recorded words.

Sporadic gunfire continues for the remainder of the video. These are interspersed with periods of near-silence, punctuated only by unintelligible shouts.

Suddenly, Hebrew is audible. “Come!” the voice shouts. “Come, come, come, come!”

Where is Assad al Nsasrah?

Nibal Farsakh, a spokesperson for PRCS, told Sky News Ashraf was not the only paramedic who was on the phone with the dispatch centre during the attack.

The dispatcher was able to successfully call Saleh Muammar as late as 5.45am, 37 minutes after the attack began, according to Nibal.

The dispatcher reportedly heard heavy gunfire in the background, and Saleh said he was injured. His body was recovered from the mass grave one week later.

At 5.54am, Nibal says, the dispatch centre managed to get through to Assad al Nsasrah – the paramedic who was sitting next to Rifaat in his ambulance.

“He was scared,” Nibal says. “He was talking about his children – please look after my children, please get me out of here.”

Nibal says the dispatcher stayed on the line with Assad for an hour-and-a-half, calling back each time the signal cut out.

At around 7am, she says, they heard Assad being arrested by the Israelis. At 7.25am, the dispatcher heard the soldiers telling Assad to empty his pockets. Fearing the soldiers would find out he had been recording them, Nibal says, the dispatcher hung up.

It was not until 13 April, three weeks after the attack, that Israel confirmed Assad was alive and in Israeli detention.

No explanation has been given for his detention, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says Israel has refused to allow it to check on his condition.

Sky News has not been able to find any evidence that Assad has links to Hamas. We were able to find a photograph of him wearing a PRCS uniform dating back as far as 2009.

The mystery of the UN official

Only one victim remains without a name or a face – that of a UN employee who was found alongside the 14 aid workers in the mass grave, his vehicle crushed and buried nearby.

A senior UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Sky News the man was a guard shift supervisor, and that it is believed he was attacked while travelling from his home to southern Khan Younis to begin his shift.

“We have no reason to believe he was doing anything aside from his job,” the official says.

The UN lost contact with him at around 6am, the official says, and later received eyewitness reports that he had been detained, apparently uninjured, by Israeli forces in the area where the medics had been attacked earlier that morning.

His body was recovered from the mass grave one week later, on 30 March.

The man’s body was buried without undergoing a post-mortem examination, though his family have since given permission for the body to be exhumed for this purpose, the official said.

The man who carried out the autopsies on the bodies, Dr Ahmed Dahair, confirmed to Sky News he had so far examined every body except that of the UN official.

Israel’s seven key claims – and what the evidence says

It was not until 31 March, after the last bodies had been pulled from the grave, that the Israeli military (IDF) commented on the attack.

Numerous claims made in that statement, and in statements since, have not stood up to scrutiny.

IDF claim: The vehicles had their lights off

What we know: The vehicles’ lights were on

The IDF’s initial statement claimed Israeli troops had opened fire on the convoy because it was “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”.

The video taken by Rifaat, which emerged on 4 April, disproved this claim, showing that all vehicles had their lights on. The IDF subsequently retracted the claim, blaming false testimony from the soldiers involved.

The vehicles are also clearly marked in the video with humanitarian symbols, and all workers appear to be in uniform.

The doctor who carried out the post-mortem examinations, Dr Ahmed Dahair, tells Sky News that “all of them were wearing their official uniforms”.

IDF claim: The vehicles lacked necessary permissions to travel in a combat zone

What we know: The area was not declared a combat zone until four-and-a-half hours after the attack

The IDF has also justified the decision to open fire by saying the vehicles were “uncoordinated” – meaning their movements were not approved in advance by the IDF.

Speaking to Sky News, however, senior officials from the UN, PRCS and Civil Defence say coordination was not required because the area had not been declared a combat zone.

“It was a safe area and does not require coordination,” says Mohammed Abu Mosahba, director of ambulance and emergency services at PRCS.

As Sky News reported on 3 April, an evacuation order for the area was only issued at 8.31am, almost four-and-a-half hours after the first ambulance was attacked.

Israeli forces did conduct a major operation in the area that morning, but Sky News found no evidence that IDF vehicles were nearby before the attacks took place.

Satellite imagery from 10.48am on the day of the incident shows a large number of vehicles near the site of the attack, and tracks connecting them with a building 1.1km to the west, indicating that this is where the vehicles came from.

A photo posted by the IDF at 8.25am that morning shows a soldier and a tank at this building. However, analysis of the shadows on the building indicates the photo was taken between 6.30am and 7.00am – well after the attacks took place.

IDF claim: Israeli troops did not fire from a close distance

What we know: Some shots were fired from as close as 12m

In a 5 April briefing to journalists, the IDF said there was “no firing from close distance” during the incident, and that this is backed up by aerial surveillance footage. The IDF is yet to release this footage.

However, as Sky News revealed on 9 April, expert analysis of the audio in Rifaat’s recording shows some of the shots fired at the medics came from as little as 12m away.

Dr Ahmed, the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem examinations, said his team were unable to determine whether the shots were fired from close range because the bodies arrived in an “advanced state of decomposition”.

IDF claim: The victims did not have their hands or feet tied together

What we know: There is no evidence to suggest the victims were restrained before being killed

Representatives of PRCS and Civil Defence, as well as a doctor who saw the bodies, have said that at least one victim was found with their hands or legs tied together – claims that Israel has denied.

Photos shared with Sky News and other media outlets as evidence of this claim do show a black plastic tie around one victim’s wrist. Attached to the tie is an empty white information card.

The tie appears only on one limb, however, and sources at Red Cross and Civil Defence told us that the white tag appears to be of the kind used by emergency workers in Gaza to identify bodies.

Dr Ahmed Dahair told Sky News he saw “no clear signs of physical restraints” during the post-mortem examinations.

“In one case, there were areas of discolouration around the wrists, which may suggest possible binding. Nevertheless, there was no definitive evidence of restraints in the remaining cases,” he said.

IDF claim: The vehicles were crushed by accident as they were moved off the road

What we know: The vehicles were only crushed after they had been moved off the road

The IDF has said the bodies were buried in order to protect them from wild animals, and that the vehicles were crushed inadvertently while being moved out of the road. It has not explained why the vehicles were buried.

Satellite imagery from the hours after the attack, however, shows that by 10.48am five vehicles had already been moved off to the side of the road but had not yet been crushed – directly contradicting the IDF’s account.

The illustration below is based on satellite imagery seen by Sky News.

IDF claim: The convoy included ‘Hamas terrorists’

What we know: There is no evidence anyone in the convoy was a militant

The IDF says “at least six” of those killed were “Hamas terrorists”, though it hasn’t alleged that any were armed.

No evidence has been provided to support this claim, and there are no indications in Rifaat’s video that any of the aid workers were combatants or had ties with Hamas.

Conflict monitoring organisation Airwars told Sky News it had conducted a thorough search of the victims’ social media history and was unable to find any evidence linking them to militant groups, though it emphasised that online information “can only ever provide a partial picture”.

The IDF has only specifically named one of these alleged Hamas operatives, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki.

However, this person has not been named as a victim of the attack by the UN, PRCS or Civil Defence.

There is no publicly available evidence that he had ties to any of these organisations, or to Hamas, or that he is dead.

IDF claim: The original ambulance contained three Hamas police officers

What we know: There is no evidence any of these three were militants

The IDF says that all three people in the original ambulance, which Rifaat’s team were searching for, were “Hamas police”.

No evidence has been provided for this claim either. Two of the men, Mustafa Khalaja and Ezz El-Din Shaat, were killed, while one, Munther Abed, was detained and later released.

Sky News reviewed social media profiles, identified by Airwars, for the two men who were killed. We found no evidence that either was affiliated with Hamas.

Ezz El-Din was photographed at a hospital wearing a PRCS uniform in October 2023, He was later pictured in February 2024 lifting an injured person out of a PRCS ambulance in Rafah.

Mustafa, meanwhile, had extensively documented his paramedic career online in photos dating back to 2011.

In one post, his young son is pictured at the wheel of a PRCS ambulance. “Mohammed insists on visiting me at work and sharing my working hours with patients,” he wrote.

Eyewitness account backs up Sky’s findings

Of all the aid workers present that day, only one has been able to tell their side of the story.

Speaking to Sky News, Munther Abed, 27, said he had been in the first ambulance attacked that day – the one that Rifaat’s convoy were looking for.

Munther denies having any connection to Hamas, telling Sky News that he was only released after the Israeli military confirmed he had no militant ties.

His story began at 3.52am, when his ambulance was sent south to the site of a reported Israeli attack. Four minutes later, the dispatch centre lost contact with them.

Munther was in the back of the ambulance when they were hit by what he describes as “heavy gunfire”. He immediately dropped to the floor.

“I did not hear a word from my two colleagues,” he says. “I only heard their final breaths, their throes of death.”

Several soldiers dragged him from the vehicle, he says, and he was stripped, beaten and placed behind a wall.

At 4.39am, Saleh Muammar’s ambulance was sent out to search for the missing team. Onboard was Ashraf Abu Labda and another medic, Raed al Sharif.

At 4.53am, they spotted Munthar’s ambulance by the side of the road. Two more ambulances, including Rifaat’s, were quickly sent to join the search.

At 5.02am, Rifaat runs into Saleh, and asks if he knows where Munthar’s ambulance is. Saleh tells him it’s back the way he came. They call for backup from Civil Defence, and head towards the scene of the attack.

At 5.08am, the search convoy arrived. Then the shooting began.

“I was only able to see the red lights flickering of the vehicles, and was able to hear the sound of sirens [and] gunfire,” Munther says.

During his interrogation, the Israeli soldiers asked Munther why he was present during a military operation. He told them he wasn’t aware of any such operation.

It was only after sunrise, he says, when heavy machinery and tanks began to arrive, that fighting in the area began.

“It happened all of a sudden,” Munther says. “They didn’t throw leaflets to inform the inhabitants to evacuate Rafah, nor did they say on the news.

“No, Rafah was fully populated. It was not a red zone or a fighting zone as they claimed.”

His account is consistent with Sky’s open-source analysis above, which found no evidence for any military operation at the time and location of the attack.

Munther says he witnessed the crushing of the vehicles with his own eyes, corroborating Sky’s finding that the vehicles were crushed only after being moved to the side of the road.

After the heavy machinery arrived at dawn, Munther says, the Israelis dug a large hole on one side of the road and several smaller holes on the other side.

“In the large hole, they put all the ambulances and the Civil Defence vehicles,” he says. “The heavy machinery climbed over all the vehicles… then they buried them with some earth.”

‘It all points to a cover-up’

“This looks like a dreadful war crime,” says Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who served as lead prosecutor in the genocide trial of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague.

“The [use] of a bulldozer to bury the bodies of the 15 people and their vehicles and the change of official accounts given by Israel all… points to a cover-up.”

Satellite imagery shows that Israeli forces moved quickly to restrict access to the scene of the attack.

Within five hours, the IDF had set up road blocks north and south of the site.

Speaking to Sky News, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said: “The way it’s been described in the first place, the original reaction by the Israeli army, the then subsequent corrections made, all points to something very, very disturbing.”

Sky’s Alex Crawford asked Olmert whether the evidence pointed to a cover-up. “I don’t know, but I don’t feel comfortable,” he said.

In an interview with Sky’s Mark Austin on 8 April, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said the IDF’s investigation would be published “very, very shortly”.

“We have nothing to hide whatsoever,” he said.

In a statement to Sky News, the IDF said it is “conducting an inquiry into the incident, which took place in a combat zone, to uncover the truth”.

“The preliminary inquiry indicated that the troops opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area, and that six of the individuals killed in the incident were identified as Hamas terrorists. All the claims raised regarding the incident will be examined through the mechanism and presented in a detailed and thorough manner for a decision on how to handle the event.”

Who is responsible?

The IDF has not released details of the soldiers involved, but it has said they belong to the elite Golani brigade.

The video below, which emerged on 4 April, shows a Golani Patrol Commander speaking to his troops.

“Everyone you encounter is an enemy,” he tells them. “If you spot a figure, open fire, eliminate, and move on.”

Geoffrey Nice says that legal culpability for the killing of the 15 aid workers could rest with the soldiers involved, or with people higher up the command chain.

“You don’t do at the bottom what you fear will not be supported by people at the top,” he says. “Why would you? The risk is too great.”

When she heard that there had been an Israeli operation overnight in Rafah, Rifaat’s mother Hajjah wasn’t worried – she had faith that her son’s status as a humanitarian worker would protect him.

Her main concern was whether, during all the inevitable call-outs, he would have time to eat or drink.

“We did not fear for his safety at all.”

Additional reporting by Olive Enokido-Lineham, OSINT producer, Mary Poynter, producer, and Adam Parker, OSINT editor.

---

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.