Israeli Executions of Palestinian Aid Workers

In the early hours of March 23, 2025, Israeli soldiers fired at least 910 rounds in Tel Al-Sultan, Gaza. Of these, we determined that at least 789 were fired directly at aid workers. Four days later, on March 27, the body of a Palestinian Civil Defence (PCD) ambulance officer was found near the incident site. Seven days later, on March 30, the bodies of the other fourteen victims, all wearing identifying uniforms or volunteer vests of their respective organisations, were recovered from a mass grave alongside the crushed remains of their ambulances and fire truck, buried under soil.

Through forensic audio analysis of three recordings — a 6-minute video and two phone calls captured by paramedics during the assault — we reconstructed the attack minute by minute. What emerges is a sustained, two-hour assault: Israeli soldiers firing from fixed positions, advancing while shooting, and ultimately executing aid workers at close range.

This investigation, conducted with Forensic Architecture (FA) and with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), is published by Drop Site News and presented in the UK Parliament on 24 February 2025.

Earshot's key findings and minute-by-minute reconstruction are outlined below. A full report co-authored with FA is available to download at the top of this page, which includes a detailed analysis of the methodologies, calculations, and witness statements used to reach our conclusions.

This investigation took nearly a year — not because of external delays, but because of what the evidence demanded. We listened to these recordings hundreds of times. We counted every gunshot and analysed its constituent sounds — its supersonic bullet shockwave, muzzle blasts, and echoes. We timestamped, catalogued, and measured the intervals between each of these sounds. We traced echoes off concrete walls to locate shooters with meter-level precision.

No other organisation — human rights body or media outlet — has analysed these recordings with this level of forensic detail. Without this audio analysis, the full scope of what occurred would have remained obscure.

Our investigation establishes three critical facts:

Survivor testimony is an accurate and reliable documentation of what occurred. Every major element detailed by survivors through testimonies — soldiers’ positions, the coordinated advance while firing, close-range executions between the vehicles, the use of missile launchers — is corroborated through audio analysis.

This was a sustained military operation against clearly marked emergency vehicles and personnel. Our investigation documents an attack lasting at least 2 hours, followed by the burial of ambulances and destruction of evidence.

Soldiers’ names revealed. Audio evidence enabled us to name three soldiers who were involved in this crime. These findings should advance efforts toward accountability.

Earshot's key findings and minute-by-minute reconstruction are outlined below. A full report co-authored with FA is available to download at the top of this page, which includes a detailed analysis of the methodologies, calculations, and witness statements used to reach our conclusions.

At approximately 4:00 am on March 23, 2025, a Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) ambulance driving along Gush Katif Road, in al-Hashahin, near Rafah in the south of Gaza, came under Israeli fire. Two drivers — Ezz El-Din Shaat and Mustafa Khafaja — were killed. A third PRCS volunteer, Munther Abed, was taken captive by the Israeli military and survived the attack.

At approximately 5:09 am, a second convoy arrived at the location of the first ambulance: 3 PRCS ambulances, one fire truck, and one Civil Defence vehicle. As the convoy came to a halt, Israeli soldiers opened fire.

Over the next two hours, Israeli soldiers fired at least 910 rounds — at least 789 directly at the aid workers.

Among the victims’ personal belongings, one mobile phone was retrieved. On it: a 6-minute video taken by PRCS first responder volunteer Refaat Radwan, capturing the moment the convoy came under Israeli gunfire at 5:09 am.

Two other PRCS aid workers — trapped in the assault — managed to call PRCS headquarters while the attack was ongoing. At approximately 5:13 am, Ashraf Abu Libda (PRCS first responder volunteer) called while under heavy gunfire. Nearly two hours later, at 6:55 am, Asaad Al-Nasasra (PRCS paramedic) called while surrounded by Israeli soldiers. Ashraf did not survive the attack. Asaad did. Both calls were recorded.

These three recordings — Refaat’s video and the two recorded phone calls — formed the evidential basis of our investigation.

We analysed the audio from these recordings and, in collaboration with FA, conducted detailed interviews with the two survivors. As the attack occurred during hours of little to no daylight, and as two of the three recordings are phone calls, audio analysis became a crucial means of reconstructing the attack and corroborating the survivors’ testimonies.

What follows is a minute-by-minute account of what audio evidence can establish when visual evidence is deliberately destroyed.

Munther Abed testified being held at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers, with “an M16 assault rifle pointed at my back”, witnessing soldiers “shooting directly at the convoy”. Our audio analysis confirmed his account.

We counted at least 910 gunshots across the three recordings. The majority — 844 shots — were captured in Refaat’s 5-minute-30-second video. The density of gunfire in this recording frequently exceeded 900 rounds per minute (RPM) — the highest rate of fire for a single M16 rifle in automatic mode.

At one point in Refaat’s video, 5 gunshots are audible within 67 milliseconds — the shortest possible time it takes an M16 to cycle and fire again. The irregular intervals between these shots confirm at least 5 shooters firing simultaneously. This represents only one moment in the attack. The remaining 839 gunshots in Refaat’s video, combined with survivor testimony, suggest many more shooters were present. Asaad testified there were “at least 12 soldiers.” Munther said “at least 30.”

Audio ballistic analysis of the 844 gunshots in Refaat’s video established that his camera was consistently in the line of fire throughout the period of audible gunshots. By identifying the supersonic shockwave made by the bullet flying past the recording device, followed by the muzzle blast in 789 out of 844 gunshots, we confirmed that 93% of all audible gunfire was fired towards Refaat’s camera and the emergency vehicles.

Audio ballistic analysis and echolocation confirmed the soldiers’ initial positions on an elevated sandbank 38 to 48 metres southeast of the vehicles. Echolocation, in this context, is the process of using the propagation of sound waves and their acoustic reflections to forensically reconstruct a scene or event. The time delay, direction, and distortion of the echo reveal the size, distance, texture, and shape of objects in the environment. This process allows us to estimate the position of a sound source and its movements.

The Israeli Army’s destruction and clearance of Tel Al-Sultan left very few structures standing. This fundamentally changed the area’s acoustic behaviour. In a dense urban environment, gunshot echoes overlap and become indiscernible from one another. Here, with most structures destroyed, the remaining surfaces produced clearly distinguishable echoes — paradoxically strengthening our ability to determine shooter positions with meter-level precision.

In the first 4 minutes of gunfire, echoes are audible between 558 and 603 milliseconds after the muzzle blast. Weidentified a 2-metre-tall and 50-metre-wide concrete wall 130 metres south of Refaat as the only surface capable of causing these echoes. Echolocation confirmed the position of Israeli soldiers on an elevated sandbank southeast of Refaat.

The interval between muzzle blast and echo remained stable throughout these 4 minutes, indicating the soldiers remained stationary on the elevated sandbank while firing continuously.

This analysis confirmed the location where Munther testified to being held at gunpoint, surrounded by Israeli soldiers who opened fire towards the vehicles as the second convoy arrived.  

In the final 1 minute and 30 seconds of Refaat Radwan’s video, echolocation and audio ballistic analysis indicated that the soldiers moved towards the aid workers at a walking pace of approximately 1 metre per second while continuously shooting.

At approximately 5:13 am, Ashraf called the PRCS headquarters. We confirmed that Ashraf’s phone call overlapped with the final 42 seconds of Refaat’s video by synchronising the sound of 109 gunshots across the two recordings.

These gunshots coincide with audible voices of Israeli soldiers, heard across the left and right audio channels in Refaat’s video. This is the first time in the recordings where we hear voices speaking Hebrew at this level of intelligibility, and the first time we hear those voices distinctly separated across the stereo field, indicating that the Israeli soldiers were positioned to both the left and right of Refaat’s phone.

In stereo recordings, proximity magnifies the positional differences captured by the left and right microphones. At a distance, sound waves hit both microphones at roughly the same time and level. However, once up close, any slight movement of the source causes larger differences in arrival time and volume between the two channels, making the movement through the stereo field sound more pronounced and distinguishable.

Therefore, the presence of the soldiers’ voices — heard both louder and across both left and right recording channels — strongly suggests that Refaat had become surrounded by Israeli soldiers who were positioned in close proximity to him.

The audible presence of Israeli soldiers’ voices coincides with Refaat and Ashraf’s final words announcing the arrival of the Israeli soldiers.

After Refaat’s video ends, Ashraf’s call continues for 52 seconds, capturing 24 additional gunshots. 8 of these contain new and distinctive muzzle blast echoes, characterised by 2 to 3 echoes in quick succession, arriving 20 to 140 milliseconds after the muzzle blast.

We analysed these echoes and determined they were reflecting off surfaces just 3-24 meters from Ashraf’s phone. The only surfaces within this range were the emergency vehicles themselves — strongly suggesting shooters were firing from between the vehicles, within meters of aid workers.

For 3 specific gunshots in Ashraf’s call, we used the positions of the ambulances relative to Ashraf’s location to establish even more precise shooter positions. The arrangement and orientation of the ambulances created a kind of architecture around the shooters, and by measuring the intervals in time between these echoes we could determine which ambulance the gunshots were reflecting off and in turn the most likely position of the shooter as they fired the shot. For one of these gunshots we could place the shooter 1 to 4 meters from Ashraf.

These gunshots coincide with the last time we hear Ashraf’s voice, suggesting they are, most likely, the shots that killed him.

This evidence corroborates survivor Asaad Al-Nasasra’s eyewitness testimony that Israeli soldiers “came down [from the sandbank], got close to them [aid workers] and shot them from close range,” and “were walking between them [aid workers] and shooting”. 

Over two hours after the attack on the second convoy, Asaad Al-Nasasra made a phone call to PRCS headquarters that captured at least 42 additional gunshots, vehicle movement, and an explosion. 

Earshot identified the acoustic signature of this explosion as matching the 3-phased operation — ejection, ignition, propulsion — of a Spike LR guided missile. This weapon is fired from “vehicle-mounted” or “man-portable” launchers and is produced by Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.¹

Asaad’s testimony described exactly this: “I saw a soldier on one knee, with the launcher on his shoulder. From the mound. (...) When the [UN] vehicle entered I was actually on the phone [with the Palestinian Red Crescent]. [They were] asking me if there were any cars moving, and I told them yes, the UN vehicle. As soon as I told him yes, they hit the vehicle”. 

Earshot enhanced the audio from Asaad Al-Nasasra’s phone call to the PRCS headquarters at around 7:13 am and identified multiple voices of Israeli soldiers speaking in Hebrew. Fragments of this speech were made intelligible, revealing the names of three soldiers involved in the attack: Elias, Yotam, and Amatzia.

A transcript of the recording reads as follows: 

International humanitarian law exists to protect precisely these workers: those who respond to crisis, who operate under emblems meant to guarantee safety. This case demonstrates how the entire framework of humanitarian protection is being undermined.

When soldiers fire 900+ rounds at marked ambulances and aid workers, advance while shooting, execute survivors at close range, and bury the evidence within hours of the attack, the framework of humanitarian protection has not simply failed — it has been deliberately violated.