The Israeli military on Sunday (April 20) acknowledged professional failures and violations of orders in its review of last month's killing of 15 emergency workers in Gaza but said there was no attempt to conceal the incident, despite dismissing a field commander for providing an inaccurate report.
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00:01The Israeli military on Sunday acknowledged professional failures and violations of orders
00:07in its review of last month's killing of 15 emergency workers in three separate shootings in the same location in Gaza.
00:15However, it said there was no attempt to conceal the incident,
00:19despite dismissing a field commander for providing an inaccurate report.
00:24The military is also reprimanding a commanding officer
00:27who had overall responsibility for what occurred
00:30and said its advocate general was conducting its own investigation
00:34and could pursue criminal charges.
00:36The paramedics and emergency responders were shot dead on March 23,
00:41near the southern city of Rafah.
00:43United Nations officials and the Palestinian Red Crescent
00:47found the bodies buried in a shallow grave a week later.
00:52This video recovered from the mobile phone of one of the dead men
00:59showed uniformed emergency responders
01:02and clearly marked ambulances and fire trucks
01:05with their lights on, being fired on by soldiers.
01:12The military said it was partly an operational misunderstanding by the troops,
01:16who believed they faced a tangible threat from enemy forces,
01:20and fired on what they initially determined as a Hamas vehicle,
01:24but was, in fact, an ambulance.
01:27The military claimed Hamas has used ambulances to carry out operations,
01:32though its soldiers are told to distinguish between genuine emergency vehicles
01:37and those used by Hamas.
01:39A paramedic on the scene who was detained by the military and later released
01:43has said soldiers opened fire on clearly marked emergency response vehicles.
01:48The Palestinian Red Crescent had called for an independent international investigation
01:53prior to the release of this report.