Berliner Tageblatt - 'Help us,' says wife of Gaza medic missing since ambulance attack

"We have no information, no idea which prison he's in or where he is being held, or what his health condition is," Nsasrah told AFP, showing a photograph of her husband Asaad in his medic's uniform at the wheel of an ambulance.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday that Nsasrah was in Israeli custody after being "forcibly abducted" when Israeli soldiers opened fire on a convoy of ambulances on March 23.

In the early hours of that day, Israeli soldiers ambushed a convoy of ambulances and a firetruck near the southern city of Rafah as the crew responded to emergency calls.

Eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Gaza civil defence agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were killed in the attack, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA.

Their bodies were found buried in the sand near the site of the shooting in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah, in what OCHA described as a mass grave.

One member of the crew survived the attack. He was initially detained by troops but subsequently released.

The Palestinian Red Crescent was able to recover footage of part of the attack filmed by one of the medics on his mobile phone before he was gunned down.

An Israeli military official told journalists that the soldiers who fired at the ambulances "thought they had an encounter with terrorists".

The video footage contradicts that account as the ambulances had their lights blinking when they came under attack.

- 'Intent to kill' -

"At the time of the incident, we had no idea what had happened," Nsasrah said in the plastic-sheet shelter in the southern city of Khan Yunis which she and her family have called home for nearly a year.

Her husband's body was not among those found in the mass grave near Rafah.

"We heard some ambulances had been surrounded (by the Israeli army), so we called (the Red Crescent) because (my husband) was late to return from his shift," the 43-year-old said.

"They told us that he was surrounded but didn't know what had happened exactly."

Afterwards, the Red Crescent told her that he had been detained by Israeli forces.

"We felt a little relieved but not completely because detainees often face torture. So we are still afraid," Nsasrah said, her voice drowned out by the persistent buzz of an Israeli surveillance drone overhead.

When the Red Crescent announced he had been detained, AFP reached out to the Israeli military for confirmation.

The military responded by referring AFP to an earlier statement noting that armed forces chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir had ordered a thorough investigation into the attack.

The March 23 killings occurred days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory and drew international condemnation.

The Palestinian Red Crescent has charged that Israeli soldiers shot the medics in their upper body with "intent to kill".

Nsasrah, her husband and their six children have been living under canvas in Khan Yunis since May last year.

Despite the hardship, she remains determined to get her husband back.

"I call on the international community to help us get any information on Asaad Al-Nsasrah," she said.

"I ask to obtain information about his health condition and to allow us to visit him or to help us get him released."

I.Meyer--BTB