DEIR BALAH: Umm Rifaat Radwan, the mother of a Gaza medic killed alongside 14 colleagues by Israeli soldiers last month, had hoped her son’s body would not be among those retrieved after the attack.

Rifaat Radwan was part of a team of medics and rescuers from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Gaza’s civil defence agency who were shot dead on March 23 near Rafah as they responded to calls for help after an Israeli air strike.

Their deaths sparked international condemnation and renewed scrutiny over the risks aid workers face in Gaza.

Israel’s army chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir has ordered an investigation into the killings.

The bodies of the 15 emergency personnel were discovered buried in the sand days later, and were recovered in two separate operations.

“They began pulling them out two by two” from a hole, Umm Rifaat, 48, said, describing how the bodies were retrieved from what rescuers called a “mass grave”.

“I thought maybe he wasn’t among them, perhaps he had been detained. I even prostrated after the afternoon prayer in gratitude.

“Then my husband told me that Rifaat had been found inside the hole,” she said.

Quiet composure

The 23-year-old Rifaat and his family hailed from Rafah, but had been displaced during the conflict to the central Gazan city of Deir Al Balah.

On March 23, he and the 14 others were killed in Tal Al Sultan area near Rafah, in what the sole survivor of the attack, Mundhir Abed, described as a violent ambush by Israeli forces early in the morning.

Worst fears confirmed

Umm Rifaat, wearing a long black abaya and veil exposing only her eyes, spoke with quiet composure as she recalled the moment her worst fears were confirmed.

Some of the bodies recovered by rescuers had been handcuffed, acco­rding to the Red Crescent, but an Israeli military official denied this.

The Israeli attack appears to have occurred in two phases.

Rifaat himself partly captured video and audio of the second assault on his convoy of ambulances and a truck before he was killed.

`Driven by humanity’

The footage from the phone found on Rifaat’s body shows ambulances moving with their headlights and em­­ergency lights clearly switched on.

“He proved his innocence with his own hands, that he is innocent in the face of the (Israeli) army’s allegations,” Rifaat’s mother said.

“What happened to them is beyond the mind’s comprehension. It is unacceptable by any measure _ legal, religious or human.”

Speaking from the displaced family’s makeshift shelter in Deir el Balah, Umm Rifaat scrolled through photos of her son on her phone. Her husband recalled the passion with which Rifaat worked as a paramedic.

“Every day he came home from work with his clothes stained in blood,” Anwar Radwan said, adding that his son had volunteered to do the job after conflict erupted in 2023.

“He never sought a salary _ this was rather a calling he loved with all his blood and soul. What drove him was simply his humanity,” Rifaat’s father said. “He loved helping people,” added Umm Rifaat.

His father saw Rifaat’s body and told Umm Rifaat that his face had been “deformed”.

She chose not to see the body, preferring instead to preserve her memory of him as he was in life. “He was like the moon — handsome and fair-skinned,” Umm Rifaat said.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2025