The news came around 2:00 p.m. Paramedic Mahmoud al-Masry and the rest of his team were at al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza, waiting for the next call.
The dispatcher then announced that ambulance 5-15 had been hit: that was the team Mahmoud’s father, who was also a paramedic, worked on.
Mahmoud and his colleagues ran to see what had happened.
When they arrived, they saw that the ambulance was a mess of twisted metal on the side of the road. Mahmoud ran towards the rubble, but found everyone inside “completely burned and destroyed”.
A BBC Arabic service documentary following paramedics during the first month of the war captured Mahmoud’s reaction when he realized that his father, Yosri, and two other members of his team had died.
“His face no longer has any features,” Mahmoud said between sobs.
The incident occurred on October 11, five days after the war began.
Life after tragedy
Yosri Al-Masry’s lifeless body was wrapped in a white shroud, along with his blood-stained helmet.
At the funeral, Mahmoud knelt by his side, wiped away tears and shook his head, as his colleagues stood nearby.
Their stories were filmed by Gazan journalist Feras Al Ajrami for the documentary Gaza 101: Emergency Rescue.
After the death of his father, Mahmoud, 29 years old and with three children, took a couple of weeks off.
But he said that, despite the deep sadness he felt, he wanted to go back to work.
“My inner drive is to serve the Palestinian people,” he said.
He set his phone’s wallpaper image to show his father’s face, “so he could see him day and night.”
Their last moments together occurred just a couple of hours before Yosri lost his life. He had asked Mahmoud to make him a cup of coffee, which he drank before midday prayers. Then his ambulance got a call and left.
Just two days earlier, Mahmoud had been injured and taken to hospital on a stretcher with shrapnel in his neck and back.
His father had cried at his side. “I was very worried,” Mahmoud said.
But when he thought about his father in the weeks that followed, it was the moments next to the destroyed vehicle that haunted him.
“Every time I feel alone, I relive it… I was running towards the ambulance, I was running towards my father, I was surprised to find him in pieces and I was about to faint.”, said.
Mahmoud has been a paramedic for seven years and at the time was deployed in Jabalia, northern Gaza, as part of a team from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS).
The documentary followed the ambulance crews for the month following October 7, when Hamas launched its attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, and Israel began its intense military response.
More than 10,000 Gazans died in that first month, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which says the number has since risen to more than 28,000.
Filming the paramedics in close-up as they drove through dark alleys and cradled the bodies of injured babies revealed how their personal and professional lives overlap.
It revealed the trauma they faced, especially when they had to deal with children’s bodies.
In those early days of the war, another paramedic, Rami Khamis, broke down sobbing behind the wheel of his ambulance.
He said he had been called to a house that had collapsed on top of its residents, mostly women and children. When he entered a room, he found three dead girls and thought of her three daughters.
“I couldn’t control myself. “I burst into tears when I saw it.”, said. At that time, images of him crying went viral.
At the end of October, Alaa Al-Halaby, another member of the team, received a call from a family member.
His uncle’s house had been hit in an Israeli attack two days earlier, Alaa said, but some of the people who had died were still buried under the rubble. They had removed the body of her cousin and hoped to take it to the hospital.
As he entered a narrow alley, where a group of people were trying to move a pile of collapsed concrete, a relative told him: “There is a girl, it is half or the whole body.”
He paused, took a deep breath, his face partially hidden behind his medical mask, and said, “The girl’s parts are there, put them with him.”
The same day, Alaa arrived at a house where five children lay dead, badly burned. He led a team as three were transported in a plastic case to his ambulance.
“The first thing that comes to mind when you hold a child’s body parts is that you remember holding your own child.”he said later.
“It makes us…” he began to explain. But he never finished the sentence, as he was called for another emergency.
A week into the war, Israel ordered civilians in northern Gaza to move south for their own safety, so most of the paramedics’ families were evacuated, while they stayed behind.
They kept in touch with their wives and children through brief conversations on the telephone or over the PRCS radio network.
Rami has been working as a paramedic for two decades and said that every time a new bout of violence broke out in Gaza, his daughters clung to him and begged him not to work.
Alaa also said that his children cried when he left and that he prayed continuously as he drove, asking God to “bring us back safe and sound.”
Risky profession
The risks faced by Palestinian Red Crescent staff and volunteers are clear.
In another incident, when some paramedics were waiting in their vehicle outside Al Awda hospital, an explosion sent them running for cover.
At least two ambulances were affected. One of the paramedics said that a house next to the hospital was targeted by an Israeli airstrike. Israel says it did not target the location but rather “attacked a military target a few hundred meters away.”
The PRCS says 14 of its paramedics have died since October 7.
“In every mission, there is danger and risk to the lives of our teams,” says Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the organization, listing incidents in which Palestinian Red Crescent staff and volunteers have died.
“Our staff are being attacked while on duty and the conditions we operate under are treacherous and horrible,” he says.
PRCS is a non-governmental humanitarian organization and a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
According to international law, The emblems of the Red Cross and Red Crescent are recognized and serve to distinguish medical and humanitarian workers, who are protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Farsakh says the emblem is painted on the top and sides of the organization’s ambulances, including ambulance 5-15, in which Mahmoud’s father died.
The PRCS believes he was “a direct target” of Israeli forces.
“With all the technology used by the Israeli occupation, there is no way to say that it was not seen,” he says.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say they “do not intentionally target medical workers, including PRCS personnel.”
In the case of ambulance 5-15, it says that it “hit a military target a few hundred meters away” and that the location of the ambulance “was not the target.”
He adds that “airstrikes do not usually cause casualties of the magnitude described.”
Israel says its operation targets Hamas fighters and that its military “takes practical precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
The IDF accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields and hiding in medical facilities. He has shared images of tunnels that Israeli forces say they have found near and under hospitals, as well as weapons that he says troops have found in medical facilities.
The Israeli military has also accused Hamas of using ambulances – although not specifically PRCS – to transport fighters and weapons.
The PRCS says that 16 of its own vehicles have been put out of service due to fighting since October 7 and that in total, across Gaza, 59 ambulances have been completely destroyed.
Farsakh says the PRCS has “never” been subject to interference from Palestinian fighters.
“Our work on the ground is to provide health and humanitarian services,” he says.
“Our principles are the same as those of the International Red Cross and the International Red Crescent, which are the most important thing: objectivity and independence,” he says. “There is no interference from any entity or party.”
In late December, the PRCS scaled down its operations in northern Gaza after it claims Israeli forces attacked its base in Jabalia.
The IDF denies opening fire on or inside the clinic, saying it “located a cell of numerous Hamas terrorists in a Red Crescent clinic.”some of whom were found wearing Red Crescent uniforms and vests.”
Farsakh says there is “absolutely no truth” to that claim and says only ambulance personnel, volunteers and injured people from displaced families were at the clinic.
Alaa, Rami and Mahmoud moved south and continued working as paramedics in the Khan Yunis area, although Rami had recently returned to the north.
In late January, as fighting intensified around Khan Younis, Mahmoud moved his wife and children – Mohamed, 6, Leila, 5, and Layan, 3 – to live in a tent. campaign in al-Mawasi, a coastal desert area previously designated as a safe zone by Israel.
Four months after his father’s death, he says his commitment to helping the sick and injured continues: “This was my father’s message and I have to continue doing it.”
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