World
U.N. Accuses Israel of Killing 15 Rescue Workers in Gaza
As Israeli forces advanced on the southern Gaza city of Rafah before dawn last Sunday, an ambulance crew set out to evacuate civilians wounded by Israeli shelling. But the ambulance and its crew were hit on the way.
Several more ambulances and a fire truck headed to the scene over the next few hours to rescue them, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, as did a U.N. vehicle, the United Nations said. Seventeen people were dispatched in total.
Then they all went silent.
It took five days for the United Nations and Red Crescent to negotiate with the Israeli military for safe passage to search for the missing people. After receiving clearance, U.N. officials said, the retrieval team found 15 dead, most of their bodies dumped in a mass grave.
On Sunday, the United Nations said Israel had killed them — a rare accusation by the organization, which is typically cautious about assigning clear blame.
“They were killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives,” the U.N. humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said on X. “We demand answers & justice.”
The Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations said all of those killed were humanitarian workers who should never have come under attack. The Red Crescent called the killings a war crime and demanded accountability.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said on X on Monday that nine of those killed were Palestinian militants. He said Israeli forces “did not randomly attack” an ambulance, but that several vehicles “were identified advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals toward Israeli troops, prompting them to shoot.
U.N. officials said the vehicles were clearly marked as rescue vehicles.
Colonel Shoshani said that during the attack, Israeli forces killed a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
He said Israeli forces had also killed eight other operatives from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group. He accused militants of “once again exploiting medical facilities and equipment for their activities.”
He did not directly say whether the militants were in the emergency vehicles or address the identities of the other six people killed.
After firing on the vehicles, U.N. officials said, Israeli forces bulldozed and crushed the ambulances, a fire truck and the U.N. vehicle.
The Red Crescent said one medic was still missing. The lone survivor, a Red Crescent worker, was detained, beaten and released by Israeli forces the same day, according to the aid group. He told colleagues that Israeli forces had killed both of the other crew members in his ambulance, the Red Crescent and U.N. officials said.
Of the 17 people involved, 10 were Red Crescent workers, six were emergency responders from Gaza’s civil defense and one was a U.N. worker, U.N. officials said.
The top U.N. humanitarian official in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, joined the retrieval team and posted photos on X showing the crumpled vehicles — husks of mangled metal jutting from the sand. The large navy-blue “N” on the U.N. vehicle was still visible on it.
“One by one, they were hit, they were struck. Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave,” he said in a video message shared by the United Nations.
Days after they went missing, the U.N. team looking for them witnessed new scenes of chaos and violence in Rafah, including “hundreds of civilians fleeing under gunfire,” Mr. Whittall said on X. One woman was shot in the back of the head, he said.
He posted a video showing what he said came next: Two men walked toward the road, apparently to retrieve the woman’s body. Then one of them was shot, too. Mr. Whittall did not say who fired the shots.
On Thursday, the U.N. convoy found the crumpled vehicles, U.N. officials said. Hours of digging yielded one body, a civil defense worker buried beneath his firetruck, Mr. Whittall said. They returned for the remaining bodies on Sunday.
Mr. Whittall narrated the search for the bodies in the video message.
“We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on,” he said. “They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave.”
The grave, he said, was marked with the emergency light from one of the destroyed ambulances.
Colonel Shoshani, the Israeli military spokesman, said the vehicles, unlike others along the same route earlier that day, had not received permission from Israeli forces to be there.
Nebal Farsakh, a Palestine Red Crescent Society spokeswoman, said that when the ambulances set out around 3:30 a.m. on March 23, Israeli forces had not yet closed off the area as a “red zone,” where ambulances must clear their movements with Israel.
Israel did not immediately address the accusations of burying people in mass graves or crushing their vehicles.
In all, the Red Crescent said, 27 of its medics have been killed since the war began.
A cease-fire paused fighting in Gaza from January until March 18, when Israel broke it.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
Iranians mourning the country’s supreme leader condemned U.S. strikes that Washington called retaliation for Iran’s attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. At a tightly controlled state funeral in Mashhad — one of Iran’s most conservative cities, where opponents of the government were unlikely to be found in the crowd — mourners voiced defiance and called for revenge.
World
Beloved musicians among victims in deadly Bahamas plane crash; aviation authority grounds flights
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A devastating double-aviation crisis in the Bahamas, including a deadly North Andros plane crash and a separate aircraft fire on Friday, prompted the government to suspend flight operations for a local airline and launch a federal safety probe.
Shortly after 1 p.m. local time Friday, a Cessna 402 aircraft with Bahamian registration departed Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau bound for San Andros Airport.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Authority (AAIA) said the plane “encountered difficulties” and crashed into bushes prior to landing.
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Authorities said 10 people were killed in a Bahamas plane crash on Friday. (Our News Bahamas via AP)
First responders, including the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Airport Authority and emergency medical personnel, rushed to the dense brush where the aircraft went down.
The Bahamas Musicians and Entertainers Union confirmed in a statement Saturday that 10 people died in the crash, including prominent members of the “The Pond Band” and a local DJ, whose artistry the union said “touched so many lives and helped to enrich the cultural fabric of The Bahamas.”
Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis said a sole survivor was pulled from the wreckage.
“Ann and I are praying for the families who are now facing unbearable grief,” Davis wrote in a statement on X. “We are also praying for the survivor, whose recovery and care will remain in our thoughts.”
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The identities of those killed in the crash have not yet been released.
While the AAIA’s preliminary reports initially indicated seven people were on board, officials are still establishing the facts of the flight manifest.
Just hours before the fatal crash in North Andros, a Flamingo Air flight en route to Mayaguana was forced to turn back to Nassau after the pilot reported a concern, according to the Ministry of Energy, Utilities and Aviation (MoET).
After the aircraft landed and passengers safely deplaned, the plane caught fire on the runway.
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FILE – The Civil Aviation Authority Bahamas temporarily suspended Flamingo Air’s Air Operator Certificate following two aircraft incidents Friday. (iStock)
Following the two back-to-back safety incidents, the Civil Aviation Authority Bahamas (CAAB) temporarily suspended Flamingo Air’s Air Operator Certificate, according to MoET officials.
“The suspension is a precautionary safety measure and should not be treated as an adverse compliance action against Flamingo Air,” the agency wrote in a statement.
FILE – The plane crashed in North Andros on Friday after taking off from Lynden Pindling International Airport. (Melissa Alcena/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Investigators from the AAIA and inspectors from the CAAB remain at the scene in North Andros as they work to determine what caused the Cessna 402 tragedy.
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Flamingo Air did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Published on •Updated
Moldova’s pro-European President Maia Sandu nominated businessman Vasile Tofan on Saturday as the country’s next prime minister to replace Alexandru Munteanu, who resigned earlier this month over differences with the ruling majority.
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In a video posted to social media, Sandu said Tofan’s primary responsibility, after his candidacy is approved by the country’s parliament, would be to move the country further towards its path of “integration” into the European Union.
He should also “strengthen the resilience of state institutions and society”, and “revive the economy”, added Sandu.
The Moldovan businessman now has two weeks to secure parliamentary backing, a prospect he hopes to achieve after submitting his government programme and his ministerial cabinet nominations.
Tofan had been mentioned as a possible prime minister last year even before the appointment of Munteanu.
Igor Grosu, who heads Sandu’s Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) which won the last parliamentary elections in September, announced on Friday that he had selected him as his candidate to replace the outgoing premier.
He said Tofan shared “the same objectives” as him and PAS, specifying that “EU accession in the years to come, institutional reform and economic growth”, were among the biggest points of agreement.
The nominee for prime minister, who graduated Harvard Business School and turns 44 on Sunday, has a degree in public management from the Netherlands and is a managing partner at Horizon Capital, a private equity firm with assets primarily in Ukraine and Moldova.
He has also chaired the board of directors of Moldova’s Purcari winery, considered the crown jewel of the country’s winemaking sector.
Munteanu, another businessman who like Sandu previously worked at the World Bank, had been chosen to boost the economy and bring it closer to the EU, but turbulence with PAS saw him vacate his post less than a year into holding office.
He resigned on 3 July after less than eight months, stating that he could no longer carry out his mandate “according to (his) principles and (his) convictions”.
The EU last month officially launched a first round of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova. Both countries became official EU candidate countries on 23 June 2022.
Additional sources • AFP
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