The Israeli military modifies the first report of the deaths of charity workers in Palestine.

JERUSALEM, April 6 (a news agency) – The Israeli military has offered new details contradicting its initial version of events surrounding the killing of 15 emergency workers near the southern Gaza city of Rafah last month, though it said investigators were still reviewing the evidence.

The 15 paramedics and emergency responders were killed on March 23 and buried in a shallow grave where their bodies were discovered a week later by officials from the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent. Another man is still missing.

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The military initially said soldiers had fired on vehicles that approached their position “suspiciously” in the dark without lights or markings. It said they killed nine gunmen from Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were driving in Palestinian Red Crescent vehicles.

But footage obtained from the cellphone of one of the deceased men and released by the Palestinian Red Crescent revealed emergency workers in their garb and distinctly marked ambulances and fire trucks, flashing their lights on, coming under fire from soldiers.

The only confirmed survivor of the incident, Munther Abed, a paramedic for the Palestinian Red Crescent, also reported that soldiers had fired on clearly marked emergency response vehicles.

On late Saturday, an Israeli military official said the video was now being examined by investigators, and conclusions were expected to be provided to army commanders on Sunday. Watch the video! 

He said the first report sent back from the field did not mention lights, but investigators were examining “operational information” and are trying to determine if this was the result of an error in the initial report.

“What we know for sure at this point is that the initial account that the person gave is not accurate. We are trying to figure out why.

Troops had identified at least six of the dead — there were 15 by early evening — as members of militant groups, according to Israeli news media briefed by the military. But the official declined to offer any specific evidence or explain how the identifications were made, saying he did not want to divulge classified information. Who's  this 15 people?

We knew they were terrorists there but this investigation has yet to finish,” he said at a news conference late on Saturday.

The U.N. and the Palestinian Red Crescent have called for an independent investigation into the killing of the paramedics.

Seventeen paramedics and emergency workers from the Red Crescent, the Civil Emergency service and the U.N. had been dispatched to respond to reports of injuries from Israeli air strikes, Red Crescent and U.N. officials have said.

Beside Abed, who was held for hours and released, another worker remains missing.

The United Nations said last week that available information suggested one of the teams was killed by Israeli forces and other emergency and aid crews were killed one after another over several hours as they sought their missing colleagues.

The military official said initial conclusions of the probe indicated troops opened fire on a car at about 4 a.m., killing two members of Hamas’ internal security forces and capturing another, who according to the official had confessed during questioning to being affiliated with Hamas.

Over time, a few vehicles came and went up the road until, about 6 a.m. Sunday morning, troops got intelligence from aerial surveillance that a suspicious convoy of vehicles was en route.

“They interpret this as another incident like what took place at 4 a.m. and they shoot,” the official said.

He said aerial surveillance footage had shown that the troops were far away when they opened fire, and he denied reports that the troops had handcuffed at least some of the paramedics and shot them at close range.

"It's not from close. They shot from a distance,” he said. “There is not mistreatment of the people there.”

He added that the soldiers had approached the group they had fired on, identifying at least some of them as militants. But he did not specify what evidence had led to the assessment.

“And in their eyes they had an encounter with terrorists, that’s a successful encounter with terrorists.”

He added that the troops had notified the U.N. about the incident the day it happened and had at first covered the bodies with camouflage netting until they could be retrieved.

“There was no event for which the IDF attempted to cover up. “They picked up the phone and called the UN right away. U.N. officials had no immediate comment.

Later, after the U.N. did not immediately come to retrieve the bodies, the soldiers covered them with sand to prevent animals from getting to them, the official said.

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Heavy machinery cleared the road by pushing the vehicles to the side, he said, but he could not explain why an engineering vehicle crushed the cars first and then buried them.

The United Nations has confirmed that it had been notified of their location last week but that almost no access was granted to the area by Israel for several days. The bodies had been buried next to their crushed vehicles — unmistakably marked ambulances, a fire truck and a U.N. car, it said.