The Israeli military IDF "regrets that innocent people were injured" and the existing guidelines will now be tightened so that similar incidents can be avoided in the future.
This is stated by the IDF in connection with the publication of an internal investigation into the highly publicized deadly shooting in Gaza on March 23.
In the attack at dawn, at least 15 Palestinian medical and rescue workers were killed when their vehicles were shot at in southern Gaza.
The Israeli internal investigation has found that individual soldiers committed "professional errors" during and after the incident – including criticism of soldiers for not following orders and not reporting the incident correctly.
"Full of lies"
The result is met with anger by the Palestinian Red Crescent, where eight of the deceased worked.
This report is full of lies, says Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Red Crescent, to the news agency AFP, and calls the investigation unacceptable.
It justifies the killing and places the blame on human mistakes by commanders on the ground when the truth is entirely different.
A commander has been forced to leave his post after the incident, which is described in the investigation as an "operational misunderstanding".
According to the investigators, it was he who, "due to poor visibility", assessed that the ambulances belonged to the terrorist-stamped Hamas. He was also, according to the investigation, the first to open fire on the ambulances.
Images from the incident show that the ambulances were clearly marked and had their blue lights on. The deceased did not act threateningly either. Despite this, the vehicles and people near them were shot at with intense gunfire for five minutes.
No evidence of executions
It wasn't until a week after the incident that the bodies could be taken care of. According to the UN agency Ocha, they were buried in mass graves in the sand, still wearing their uniforms, after being "shot dead one by one".
However, allegations that the military executed the rescue workers and that the deceased were bound before or after being shot have not been supported by the investigation.
On the other hand, it is considered "wrong" to have destroyed the ambulances after the incident.
The IDF states in a separate statement that six of the deceased belonged to Hamas, which the investigation did not find evidence for. They also found no weapons on the deceased.
According to the respective organization, eight of the deceased worked for the Red Crescent, six for the Palestinian civil defense, and one for the UN's Palestine agency Unrwa.
