PRCS renews its calls to international community to ensure the protection of its personnel and facilities

GAZA: The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) today renewed its calls to the international community to ensure the protection of its personnel and facilities and provide a safe humanitarian space. PRCS expressed sorrow over the killing of two of its ambulance crews, Ahmed Al-Madhoun and Youssef Zaino, who were on a mission to rescue the child Hind in the Tal Al-Hawa area in Gaza City, as their decomposed bodies were found among the remains of the ambulance vehicle, burnt and shattered as a result of the Israeli occupation forces deliberate targeting of the vehicle. The association added that this crime comes after the killing of paramedic Muhammad Al-Omari on February 7 after being targeted by occupation sinpers during a mission to evacuate wounded people from hospitals in Gaza City to the south despite a prior coordination through the International Committee of the Red Cross. Israeli forces also directly shot and injured two other paramedics, one in the chest and the other in the eye, PRCS added. The P alestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) indicated that the number of Red Crescent crew members who were killed by occupation forces since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip rose to 14, which constitute a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. The Red Crescent Society expressed its shock of the occupation's detention of nine of its staff and a number of patients from Al Amal Hospital on the 9th of February following their incursion into the hospital, tampering with its contents and destroying a number of medical devices. Israeli occupation army also detained two volunteers on the 8th of the same month after evacuating the displaced people from Al-Amal Hospital, which was under Israeli army siege for the twenty-first day in a row, through humanitarian corridor coordinated through the International Committee of the Red Cross, bringing the number of detained workers and volunteers of the association to 14 staff. It indicated that based on international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, the direct targeting and deliberate killing of the association's crews and volunteers is considered a war crime, and the contracting parties that signed the Geneva Conventions are obligated to enforce respect for international humanitarian law. PRCS added that the occupation's detention of its personnel, which may amount to the crime of enforced disappearance in some cases, is illegal and they must be released immediately. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society urgently called for the necessity of enforcing respect for the Red Crescent emblem, which is protected in accordance with the provisions of international law, and protecting the legal personality of the Society and facilitating its humanitarian mission, which was ignored by the Israeli occupation, which led to the creation of unbearable operational conditions for the Palestinian Red Crescent teams to perform their humanitarian tasks. It also called for the need to provide protection for the displaced people who sought refuge in its facili ties. Source: Palestine news and Information Agency – WAFA