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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Negate. I’m Amy Goodman with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Gaza, where nearly twelve months within the past, Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinian medics and support workers in a sustained two-hour attack on a rescue convoy and then attempted to duvet it up. The infantrymen buried 14 our bodies in a shallow mass grave and crushed the rescue vehicles with heavy machinery. The ambush took bid within the early hours of March 23, 2025, within the build of abode of Tel al-Sultan in southern Gaza. These killed incorporated eight support workers with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, six Palestinian civil protection workers and a U.N. relief agency staffer.

The independent research groups Forensic Structure and Earshot occupy painstakingly recreated a minute-by-minute accounting of what took bid. The 11-month investigation draws on audio and video recordings from the scene, initiate source and satellite imagery, and the in-depth testimony of two survivors. It is a clip.

ASSAAD AL-NASSASRA: [translated] To give you an concept, it used to be composed darkish. We crossed the ambush build with out noticing the auto. Then we met Saleh and Ashtraf’s ambulance at the Iqlimi crossroad.

AMY GOODMAN: Forensic Structure constructed a 3D model based entirely on the testimony and on hand visuals, whereas Earshot typical echolocation to investigate the simpler than 900 shots fired. They concluded that Israeli forces had been in an elevated bid after they began firing, then moved in opposition to the support workers whereas consistently firing.

Paramedic Rifaat Radwan used to be recording on his cell mobile phone from inner seemingly the most vehicles when the attack began, exhibiting the ambulances had their lights on when the attack began, contradicting Israel’s initial claim that the convoy had approached suspiciously with their lights off.

[sounds of gunfire]

AMY GOODMAN: The sounds of Israeli gunfire had been recovered when Radwan’s cell mobile phone used to be chanced on after his body used to be exhumed. For additional, we are joined by two of the investigators. Samaneh Moafi is assistant director of research with Forensic Structure. Lawrence Abu Hamdan is the founder and director of Earshot. He has been described as a “non-public ear” moderately than a non-public ogle for his work as an audio investigator, used to be recently profiled by The Fresh Yorker Magazine. They’re each and each joining us from London. Samaneh, why don’t we initiate with you? Relate us about the day, what took place, what used to be understood at the time, and then what you chanced on as you dissected what took bid.

SAMANEH MOAFI: On the day, rapidly sooner than 4:00 a.m. within the morning, there could be an airstrike in Al-Hashashin. Two Red Crescent ambulances are despatched to rescue other individuals that are injured, and one of them loses contact. So, time passes. The Red Crescent sends extra ambulances to study the misplaced ambulance. Then they’re joined by a civil protection ambulance and a hearth truck. They obtain the lacking ambulance. They skill it. Then, upon drawing arrangement, they’re shot at but again. Our investigation brings and presentations a detailed prognosis of what exactly took bid minute by minute from the starting up to the days and weeks and months that followed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Samaneh, could well you furthermore mght focus on the broader context whereby this incident came about? What the pain used to be in Gaza at the time when this incident came about on March 23, final year, 2025?

SAMANEH MOAFI: For optimistic. A ceasefire had began in January in Gaza on the nineteenth of January. On the 18th of March, the ceasefire is broken by a sequence of midnight airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces. About 400 Palestinians are killed in these midnight strikes. We’ve on the 20 of March leaflets dropped by the Israeli armed forces throughout Gaza with genocidal messages.

The incident, this airstrike in Al-Hashashin, happens on 23rd of March, so 5 days after the smash of the ceasefire by the Israeli armed forces. Then the attack happens on seemingly the most ambulances, then it’s some distance followed by a extra or much less an attack and an execution of a convoy of rescue workers who come making an are trying to obtain the lacking ambulance.

Then I will extra or much less also bid what happens after. We’ve been ready to label that the attack continues for over two hours. So unless 7:00 a.m. within the morning where we have got the final recording of the night, we can hear sounds of shooting. At about 8:30 a.m., leaflets are dropped in Tel al-Sultan telling other individuals to evacuate their properties.

At the present, we even occupy a sequence of earth berms starting up build on this build of abode. So we have got the building of pits that then are typical for interrogation. We’ve the building of checkpoints. And on the very identical boulevard, we have got the burying of the our bodies and we have got the burying and crushing of the ambulances and the emergency vehicles. By this level, two U.N. vehicles occupy also arrived on build and had been also attacked.

Certainly seemingly the most two survivors of the incident from the Red Crescent, Munther Abed, used to be typical as what he described as a extra or much less human tool to display screen the checkpoint, to enact the work for the Israeli armed forces, to separate Palestinian males from ladies folk and then attach the ones that the Israelis are saying into interrogation pits. So as that’s extra or much less take care of the early hours. We ogle the building of those earth berms at a satellite image that’s on hand from 11:00 a.m. on that morning.

Now, what follows is a destruction of—a clearing of Tel al-Sultan neighborhood, of Rafah. Then what we have got is a extra or much less a turn. We’ve the militarization of support. By this level, there used to be months that no support is entering Gaza, and we have got extra or much less take care of a building of 4 websites for distribution of support. But finally what they’re doing is luring Palestinians in so that they could per chance be killed but again. Certainly one of those support distribution websites is essentially constructed correct by the build of the massacre and the execution of support workers in Tel al-Sultan.

AMY GOODMAN: I must bring Lawrence Abu Hamdan into this conversation, this out of the ordinary myth, the crushing of the ambulances and burying them to veil what had taken bid. But Lawrence, are you able to existing the role of your group, Earshot, in analyzing the gunshots, what exactly took bid, what you chanced on, what number of shooters, their areas? All every other time, you’ll want to well well occupy gotten been known as, moderately than a non-public ogle, a “non-public ear.”

LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN: Thanks so great for having us. It is a primary case for a company take care of Earshot. We enact audio prognosis for human rights and environmental advocacy. After we have got a case take care of this where the evidence is essentially heard nonetheless now not so great seen—since the fundamental share of evidence that used to be taken by Rifaat Radwan, he used to be conserving the digital camera to his chest as he used to be covering from the gunfire. And so you ogle very shrimp nonetheless you hear nearly every thing that happens. And likewise you hear it in stereo. So what we could well enact is over 11 months analyze each and each of those gunshots and sort of share collectively all of the parable of what took place.

What we chanced on out is that they open firing from an elevated bid where the vehicles would had been in beefy assume about, about 40 meters to the southeast of Rifaat’s bid. Then they open advancing after about four minutes of gunfire. This is essentially intense gunfire. So in those first 5 minutes, you’ll seemingly be talking about 850 shots fired.

Against the final minute and thirty seconds of that video, the Israeli infantrymen stroll in as they’re firing. They switch at a walking tempo of about one meter per 2d. Then they advance at the bid of the support workers. There we initiate to listen to new echoes that we don’t hear on the remaining of the recording. These are the echoes reflecting off the ambulances themselves, indicating that the infantrymen are in and amongst the ambulances as they are firing at the support workers for the final shots. These are when the video cuts, and we assume these are the moments of the execution. They’re within meters of the support workers.

And in actual fact our prognosis could well slip one step further, is that by form of the orientation and the group of the ambulance spherical the shooter, we could well ogle which used to be essentially the seemingly one that used to be producing each and each echo. So each and each shot produced three echoes and we could well configure that and triangulate that between the echoes to search out that for seemingly the most shots, the 862nd shot fired that night, used to be fired from as stop as one meter, to seemingly the most paramedic’s— Ashraf Abu Labda’s—bid. This is the 2d where we hear the final sounds of him, his final utter, his closing movements, which in actual fact means that this is the shot that executed him.

Yet every other key piece of our audio prognosis used to be to ascertain the witnesses, the survivors, as in actual fact essentially the most decent source of documentation for this match. In each and each key 2d, we could well corroborate what they said and how they explained the match, including some very little little print that we could well hear and get. The movements [inaudible] as somebody tried to smash out, we hear it on the recording. The utilization of explicit weapons that took place great later, two hours later.

So I in actual fact want to push that forward whereas I’m with you this day is that it took a year’s price of work for us to essentially corroborate those testimony, nonetheless those survivors had been saying this recordsdata all along. So we are trying to procure them the audibility with this case. We desire them to be heard indirectly as essentially the most decent narrators of this match and to expand their voices.

And we ogle this time and time but again. We also, collectively with Forensic Structure, printed our joint investigation to the killing of Hind Rajab. All every other time, Hind says it over and over—”The tank is next to me. They’re firing at me.” It took our work to label that yes, the tank used to be 12 meters away. But she’s now not a tragic sufferer of war; She is a explore to the crimes being perpetrated in opposition to her. And we’re seeking to procure Palestinians that audibility by listening so intensely to those crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: Hind is a shrimp bit 5-year-passe, six-year-passe lady who used to be killed by an Israeli tank. Her complete family, her aunt and uncle and her cousins, had already been killed on this automobile and [inaudible] made a documentary The Relate of Hind Rajab that tells her myth.

Following an inner armed forces inquiry, the commanding officer—merit to the killing of the Palestinian support workers—of the 14th Brigade received a letter of reprimand for “his overall accountability for the incident.” And the deputy commander of the Golani Reconnaissance Battalion angry about the incident used to be dismissed from his bid attributable to “his tasks as the topic commander and for providing an incomplete and unsuitable legend at some level of the debrief.” No prison actions instructed by the inquiry.

Lawrence, indirectly, as we easiest occupy a minute to head, within the occasion you’ll want to touch upon this? And likewise your being ready to resolve out among the names, if easiest the first names, of the Israeli shooters, the Israeli assassins.

LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN: With the in actual fact shrimp resources we’ve had—two mobile phone calls to the Palestinian Red Crescent headquarters and one recording taken below indecent duress—we have got been ready to share collectively this crime. There is no such thing as a the reason why the Israeli Military with all of its GPS coordinates, its drones within the sky, couldn’t occupy executed this inner investigation at a intention better resolution than we have got executed. So we ask this is solely an obstruction of justice. It is a flagrant war crime to attack medics and to waste them and fabricate them from meters away. And so we correct enact now not obtain it enough at all, the response to this crime.

AMY GOODMAN: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, director of Earshot, also Samaneh Moafi of Forensic Structure, assistant director of research, we thanks so great for being with us. We’ll have the flexibility to link to your new legend, Israeli Executions of Palestinian Back Workers and Efforts to Cloak Evidence.

Coming up, we talk to the Committee to Defend Journalists about the torture of Palestinian journalists in Israeli prisons. Follow us.

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