Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli forces executed 15 Palestinian rescue workers in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, shooting them in the chest and head before burying them in a mass grave last week.

The Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday that Dr. Bashar Murad, director of health programs at the Palestinian Red Crescent, confirmed that the autopsies clearly revealed that "their upper bodies had been shot, and they were then buried one on top of the other."

Dr. Murad added that one of the paramedics spoke on the phone with his colleagues at an ambulance station during the Israeli attack, "telling us he was injured and asking for help. He said that another person was also injured. Minutes later, during the conversation, we heard Israeli soldiers saying in Hebrew, 'Gather them by the wall and bring handcuffs to handcuff them.'"

Dr. Murad stressed that this indicates that at least a number of rescue crew members were still alive at the time.

Haaretz quoted a rescue worker on Wednesday as saying that one of the bodies had its feet bound, indicating that some of the rescue crew members had been executed. The Gaza Health Ministry announced on Sunday that some of the rescue crew members had been found dead, their hands tied.

Sources involved in the exhumation of the bodies from the mass grave reported that an Israeli army bulldozer buried the bodies and the vehicles they were transported in under two large mounds of earth, one of which had been covered with an ambulance light.

They reported that an Israeli officer directed rescue crews to the location where the bodies were buried and demanded a bulldozer.

The UN team received approval from the Israeli military to exhume the bodies five days after submitting a request.

Fifteen people were killed in this Israeli massacre, which took place on March 23, including eight members of the Palestinian Red Crescent, six civil defense rescue personnel, and a United Nations employee.

The Israeli military confirmed on Sunday that its forces had committed the massacre, claiming that its forces had spotted the Palestinian rescue vehicles as "suspicious vehicles," and that "an initial examination revealed that they had traveled without coordination and without emergency lights." The military also claimed that its forces had opened fire on a rescue convoy, killing Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists. The Israeli military did not mention that the victims had been buried in a mass grave or that some of the martyrs had been handcuffed.