DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinians held funerals Monday for 15 medics and emergency responders killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza, after their bodies and mangled ambulances were found buried in an impromptu mass grave, apparently plowed over by Israeli military bulldozers.

The Palestinian Red Crescent says the slain workers and their vehicles were clearly marked as medical and humanitarian personnel and accused Israeli troops of killing them “in cold blood.” The Israeli military says its troops opened fire on vehicles that approached them “suspiciously” without identification.

The dead included eight Red Crescent workers, six members of Gaza’s Civil Defense emergency unit and a staffer from UNRWA, the U.N.’s agency for Palestinians. The International Red Cross/Red Crescent said it was the deadliest attack on its personnel in eight years.

Since the war in Gaza began 18 months ago, Israel has killed more than 100 Civil Defense workers and more than 1,000 health workers, according to the U.N.

Here is what we know about what happened.

Missing for days

The emergency teams had been missing since March 23, when they went at around noon to retrieve casualties after Israeli forces launched an offensive into the Tel al-Sultan district of the southern city of Rafah.

The military had called for an evacuation of the area earlier that day, saying Hamas militants were operating there. Alerts by the Civil Defense at the time said displaced Palestinians sheltering in the area had been hit and a team that went to rescue them was “surrounded by Israeli troops.”

“The available information indicates that the first team was killed by Israeli forces on 23 March,” the U.N. said in a statement Sunday night.

Further emergency teams that went to rescue the first team were “struck one after another over several hours,” it said. All the teams went out during daylight hours, according to the Civil Defense.

The Israeli military said Sunday that on March 23, troops opened fire on vehicles that were “advancing suspiciously” toward them without emergency signals.

It said “an initial assessment” determined that the troops killed a Hamas operative named Mohammed Amin Shobaki and eight other militants. Israel has struck ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the past, accusing Hamas militants of using them for transportation.

However, none of the dead staffers from the Red Crescent and Civil Defense had that name, and no other bodies were reported found at the site, raising questions over the military’s suggestion that alleged militants were among the rescue workers.

The military did not immediately respond to requests for the names of the other alleged militants killed or for comment on how the emergency workers came to be buried.

After a ceasefire that lasted roughly two months, Israel relaunched its military campaign in Gaza on March 18. Since then, bombardment and new ground assaults that have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry’s count does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but it says over half those killed are women and children.

Aid workers say ambulance teams and humanitarian staff have come under fire in the renewed assault. A worker with the charity World Central Kitchen was killed Friday by an Israeli strike that hit next to a kitchen distributing free meals. A March 19 Israeli tank strike on a U.N. compound killed a staffer, the U.N. said, though Israel denies being behind the blast.

Mass grave

For days, Israeli forces would not allow access to the site where the emergency teams disappeared, the U.N. said.

On Wednesday, a U.N. convoy tried to reach the site but encountered Israeli troops opening fire on people.

The convoy saw a woman who had been shot lying in the road. The dashboard video shows staff talking about retrieving the woman. Then two people are seen walking across the road. Gunfire rings out and they flee. One stumbles, apparently wounded, before he is shot and falls onto his face to the ground. The U.N. said the team retrieved the body of the woman and left.

On Sunday, the U.N. said teams were able to reach the site after the Israeli military informed it where it had buried the bodies, in a barren area on the edges of Tel al-Sultan. Footage released by the U.N shows workers from PRCS and Civil Defense, wearing masks and bright orange vests, digging through hills of dirt that appeared to have been piled up by Israeli bulldozers.

The footage shows them digging out multiple bodies wearing orange emergency vests. Some of the bodies are found piled on top of each other. At one point, they pull out a body in a Civil Defense vest out of the dirt, and it is revealed to be a torso with no legs. Several ambulances and a U.N. vehicle, all heavily damaged or torn apart, are also buried in the dirt.

“Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,” said Jonathan Whittall, with the U.N. humanitarian office OCHA, speaking at the site in the video. “We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives.”

“It’s absolute horror what has happened here,” he said.

Funerals

A giant crowd gathered on Monday outside the morgue of Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis as the bodies of the eight slain PRCS workers were brought out for funerals. Their bodies were laid out on stretchers wrapped in white cloth with the Red Crescent logo on it and their photos, as family and others held funeral prayers over them. Funerals for the seven others followed.

“They were killed in cold blood by the Israeli occupation, despite the clear nature of their humanitarian mission,” Raed al-Nimis, the Red Crescent spokesperson in Gaza, told the AP.

Israeli troops have killed at least 30 Red Crescent medics over the course of the war. Among them were two killed in February 2024 when they tried to rescue Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old girl who was killed along with six other relatives when they were trapped in their car under Israeli fire in northern Gaza.

From Geneva, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Jagan Chapagain, said the staffer killed last week “wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked.”

“All humanitarians must be protected,” he said.

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Keath and Khaled reported from Cairo

Furious comments issued by President Donald Trump over the weekend prompted a swift and aggressive response from Iran, while Russian President Vladimir Putin remains tight-lipped in the face of the U.S. leader’s ire.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, issued a warning on Monday and said it would respond “decisively and immediately” to any threat issued by the U.S. after Trump said there “will be bombing” and likely more tariffs if Tehran does not agree to a nuclear deal with Washington. 

“The enmity from the U.S. and Israel has always been there. They threaten to attack us, which we don’t think is very probable, but if they commit any mischief, they will surely receive a strong reciprocal blow,” Khamenei said according to a Reuters report.

TRUMP THREATENS TO BOMB IRAN UNLESS THEY END NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND BEGIN TALKS ON NEW DEAL

“And if they are thinking of causing sedition inside the country as in past years, the Iranian people themselves will deal with them,” he added.

Despite Iran’s refusal and warning directed at both the U.S. and Israel, Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Khamenei’s comments are an attempt to “buy time” while balancing growing external and internal pressures on his regime.

“At once, Khamenei sought to both downplay the chances of President Trump or Israel taking military action while also looking to deter such an eventuality due to the regime’s own policies,” he told Fox News Digital. “This is a tightrope Khamenei will increasingly be forced to walk as he plays for time and engages in nuclear escalation.

“U.S. policy should be to keep Khamenei off balance,” he added.

While Iran takes an offensive stance against Trump and his ambitions to finally bring Tehran to heel on its nuclear expansion, Russia is taking a different approach as it refuses to bow to Trump’s plans to see an end to the war in Ukraine. 

TRUMP SAYS HE IS ‘PISSED OFF’ WITH PUTIN OVER LACK OF PEACE PROGRESS: REPORT

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran. (Dmitry AZAROV / SPUTNIK / AFP)

Over the weekend, Trump said he was “pissed off” over comments made by Putin on Friday when he suggested the work Washington was doing to negotiate a ceasefire with Russia and Ukraine was moot because he believes the government in Kyiv to be illegitimate and therefore cannot sign any deals. 

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault … I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said, noting that tariffs could be as high as 50%. 

The president later said his ire could “dissipate quickly” if Putin “does the right thing,” and once again noted he has “a very good relationship with [Putin].”

However, the Kremlin chief, who reportedly has another call scheduled with Trump this week, has not responded to Trump’s heated comments.

The chief spokesman for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, said on Monday that Russia will continue to work on “restoring” relations with Washington that he said were “damaged by the Biden administration” following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and noted that Putin remains in “open contact” with Trump.

However, Putin’s lack of public response and the toned-down statements from the Kremlin are all part of Putin’s broader strategy, former DIA intelligence officer and Russia expert, Rebekah Koffler, told Fox News Digital.

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, D.C., on Mar. 30, 2025, when he said he was “pissed off” at Russian President Vladimir Putin. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

“Putin, like Trump, thrives on confrontation,” Koffler said. “Except his approach is different. The Kremlin deliberately is projecting that Putin is cool, calm, and collected now, which he is. 

“The fact that President Trump reportedly got mad and used those words means to Putin that he finally got to him, the way he got to Biden, Obama, and others who called him a killer and other derogatory words,” she continued. 

“Putin now feels that not only Russia has an upper hand on the battlefield over Ukraine and in terms of total combat potential over NATO, but he also was able to unbalance Trump,” Koffler explained. “That is the whole point – it’s a judo move.” 

Leaders from Marine Le Pen’s Patriots party across EU countries rallied to her support after the French court ruling on Monday found her guilty of misappropriation of public funds and barred her from running for the next presidential elections in France.

No joint statement has been issued by Patriots.eu, the European political party to which Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) is affiliated. However, leaders from the Patriots’ parties have expressed solidarity with the RN’s founder.

“Je suis Marine,” (I am Marine), wrote Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on X.

“I back Marine,” was the message in French of Italy’s League leader Matteo Salvini, posted to a picture with the French politician.

The League’s delegation in the European Parliament considered the ruling “political and disproportionate” and “the greatest judicial scandal of the Fifth (French) Republic”. “Today it is not Marine Le Pen or the National Rally being hit, but democracy,” read a note from the Italian party.

“I am shocked by the incredible tough verdict against Marine Le Pen,” wrote the Dutch nationalist leader Geert Wilders, founder and president of PVV, adding that he is confident she “will win the appeal and become the president of France.”

Statements of solidarity and accusations towards the French judiciary also arrived from Belgium and Greece.

“When nationalist politicians gain popularity, the system seeks other, non-democratic ways to silence them,” Tom Van Grieken, president of Flemish sovereigntist party Vlaams Belang, wrote on X.

“Today we are all with Marine Le Pen. The instrumentalisation of Justice for political expediency undermines democracy itself,” read a post from Afroditi Latinopoulou, a Greek member of the European Parliament and founder of ultranationalist party The Voice of Reason.