New evidence appears to disprove the initial account given by the Israel Defence Force for why its soldiers killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and civil defense workers in Gaza in late March.

The Israeli military said at the time that its forces had opened fire on several vehicles after they suspiciously approached troops without coordination or headlights.

According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), paramedics and civil defense workers were attacked by soldiers in Rafah on March 23. The bodies were only recovered from a mass grave seven days later.

The PRCS has now published a video that it says is from the cell phone of one of the paramedics who was killed.

Filmed through the windshield of a vehicle, two ambulances and a fire engine with signal lights on their roofs can be clearly seen driving in a convoy along a country road. The footage was taken in the dark, making the signal lights clearly visible. After a short time, they stopped near a minibus that was standing unlit next to the road on unpaved ground.

Suddenly, you see that the windshield has several cracks. Two men — one of them in a high-visibility vest — run from one of the ambulances already stationary to the broken-down vehicle. A frightened male voice is heard speaking in Arabic, and then the person filming seems to duck down while shots ring out. The image goes largely black.

The voice continues to speak in an anxious, pleading tone. It is possible to hear, among other things, prayers that Muslims say when they........

© Deutsche Welle