The first responders massacre: 14 aid workers found dead and buried, hands bound
Members of the PRCS and other emergency services pray by the bodies of fellow rescuers killed by Israeli forces, during a funeral procession in Khan Yunis on 31 March 2025
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 31 March 2025:
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Taghreed al-Attar sits next to her husband’s body, which was discovered last Friday in Rafah. Her husband, Anwar al-Attar, left with fellow first responders to Rafah the previous week, but no one returned.
His wife says that when they lost contact with him, people told her he had been imprisoned by the Israeli army. But she says he came to her in a dream, and she saw him in paradise surrounded by rivers and fruit. She couldn’t believe he was a prisoner.
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Al-Attar had been dispatched with his Civil Defense colleagues last week on a mission to rescue a team of paramedics with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) who had gone missing, only to have contact with him and the rescue team severed as well.
Anwar’s body was found buried in the sand a few days later. This was the first sign of evidence that the Israeli army had targeted Civil Defense and PRCS crews in Rafah, a Civil Defense spokesperson told Mondoweiss.
A few days after finding the body of al-Attar, Civil Defense teams that had been digging in the area after being granted permission by the Israeli army found 14 dead bodies.