The Israel Defense Forces and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have said IDF soldiers opened fire on the ambulances and rescue vehicles because they were “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”.

Government officials claimed to have killed a Hamas military operative they named as Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, and “eight other terrorists” from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in the attack on 23 March.

However, Shubaki was not among the bodies recovered — by whom? from the mass grave outside Rafah on Saturday and Sunday:
1, eight of which were identified as Red Crescent ambulance workers,
2. six as civil defence rescue workers,
3. and one as an employee of the UN relief agency UNRWA.

The IDF has not responded to questions about:
1. why the dead were buried with their vehicles or
2. to reports that some showed signs of having been tied up.