News Review
20 JUNE 2025 ausdoc. com. au
The life and deaths of health workers in Gaza
GETTY IMAGES
Paramedics transport bodies to the Nasser Medical Complex in
Gaza, 30 March.
“
Ciara Seccombe( left) Reporter
Paul Smith( right) Editor
‘ You have to make peace with the outcome.’
FORGIVE me, Mum. This is the path I chose— to help people.” When Rifaat Radwan utters these words, he has minutes to live.
A few moments before, the paramedic had been driving in a convoy along a road in the southern city of Rafah, Gaza. His ambulance has now slowed to a walking pace.
Some of his fellow crew in the vehicles ahead have already stopped. With the emergency lights flashing, they get out to attend to another ambulance, which has been run off the road.
It is first light, birds are chirping, but then the sound of gunfire engulfs them.
Within seconds, Rifaat has jumped from the ambulance as the world turns upsidedown. When he reaches the roadside, he begins to pray.
“ I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”
It is the shahada, a prayer Muslims recite when death comes to take them.
For some five-and-a-half minutes, Israeli troops continue to fire at the medics, who are unarmed.
Shallow graves
A week later, UN officials find Rifaat’ s corpse, along with 14 others, in a shallow mass grave.
Eight of the bodies are those of paramedics, six are of other emergency responders, and one is of a UN worker.
The killing of these men by the reconnaissance unit of Israel’ s Golani Brigade has captured worldwide attention.
But the true details of their final moments may have never been known.
After the first news of the 23 March attack surfaced, the Israel Defense Forces
( IDF) issued a media statement declaring that nine of the dead were Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants. 1
“ On Sunday, IDF troops operating in southern Gaza opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists,” the release said.
“ A few minutes afterwards, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the troops. An initial inquiry indicates that the vehicles were moving without prior co-ordination, and without headlights or emergency signals.
“ The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.
“ The IDF condemns the repeated use of civilian infrastructure by the terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip, including the use of medical facilities and ambulances for terrorist purposes.”
It added:“ Following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
Two things shattered this picture.
‘ Forgive me, Mum. This is the path I chose— to help people … The army has arrived.’
The UN humanitarian workers granted access by the IDF to retrieve the bodies from the shallow grave had been shocked by what they found.
The scene had been bulldozed and the ambulances crushed.
They laid out the bodies one by one in white body bags on the sand among the wreckage.
Dr Ahmad Dhair, the doctor who would perform the autopsies, said one of the men had bruising on his wrists, which suggested he had been bound. 2
He stopped short of saying he was sure that was the case— after a week in the desert dirt, decomposition made it hard to draw clear conclusions, he stressed.
The autopsy reports, according to The New York Times, said 11 of the men had gunshot wounds, including at least six who were shot in their chests or backs and four who were shot in the head. Most had been shot multiple times. One man had several shrapnel wounds in his chest and abdomen; two others had injuries that the autopsy reports said were“ consistent” with shrapnel, possibly related to an explosion.
Several of the bodies were missing limbs or other body parts, the reports said. One man’ s body was severed from the pelvis down.
But among the dead, something else was discovered. It was Rifaat’ s mobile phone. On it was a video documenting the final
20 minutes of his life.
A six-minute version was initially presented to the UN Security Council by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It was later handed by an unnamed diplomat to journalists from The New York Times and posted on its website. 3
The first seconds of the footage show the ambulances’ emergency lights flashing