The Israeli military said Sunday that an investigation into its soldiers’ deadly attack on medics in Gaza last month had identified “several professional failures” and that a commander would be dismissed.
The military had previously acknowledged carrying out the attack in Rafah, southern Gaza, that killed 14 rescue workers and a United Nations employee who drove by after the others were shot. But it had offered shifting explanations for why its troops fired on the emergency vehicles and said it was investigating the episode, one that prompted international condemnation and that experts described as a war crime.
On Sunday — nearly a month after the attack — the military released a statement summarizing its investigation.
“The examination identified several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident,” it said.
The deadly shootings of the rescue workers resulted from “an operational misunderstanding” by troops on the ground “who believed they faced a tangible threat from enemy forces.” Firing on a U.N. vehicle, the statement added, involved “a breach of orders” in a combat setting.
Israeli troops fired on ambulances and a fire truck sent by the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, as well as the United Nations vehicle that passed by separately, according to witness accounts, video and audio of the attack.
The military said on Sunday that “due to poor night visibility,” the deputy commander on the ground “did not initially recognize the vehicles as ambulances.”
Two weeks ago, the Israeli military acknowledged that some of its early assertions, based on accounts from troops involved in the killing, were partly mistaken.
Military officials had initially asserted, repeatedly and erroneously, that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” toward the troops “without headlights or emergency signals.”
The military backtracked on that assertion a day after The New York Times published a video, discovered on the cellphone of one of the dead paramedics, that showed the clearly marked vehicles flashing their lights and coming to a halt before the attack.
Israeli soldiers later buried most of the bodies in a mass grave, crushed the ambulances, fire truck and a U.N. vehicle, and buried those as well.
In the statement on Sunday, the Israeli military said that “removing the bodies was reasonable under the circumstances, but the decision to crush the vehicles was wrong.”
The commander of the brigade involved will receive a reprimand “for his overall responsibility for the incident,” it said, while the battalion’s deputy commander will be dismissed because of his responsibilities “and for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief.”
Bilal Shbair contributed reporting from Gaza, and Vivian Yee from Cairo.
Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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