A Forensic Reconstruction of the Tel al-Sultan Massacre
On March 23, 2025, Israeli soldiers killed 15 Palestinian aid workers in the Tel al-Sultan area of southern Gaza. That much was known. What a year-long joint investigation by the independent research groups Earshot and Forensic Architecture now reveals is the granular, minute-by-minute mechanics of how it happened: the positions of the shooters, the distances from which they fired, and the deliberate progression from ambush to execution.
The report, released in February 2026, draws on video and audio recordings made by the aid workers themselves, satellite imagery, open-source materials, and in-depth interviews with two survivors. Its findings are difficult to square with the Israeli military's characterization of the killings as the product of an "operational misunderstanding."
Nearly a Thousand Bullets
The numbers alone are staggering. Earshot's audio analysis documented at least 910 gunshots across three recordings, with 844 of those fired in a span of just five minutes and thirty seconds. At least 93 percent of the shots in the opening minutes were directed toward the clearly marked emergency vehicles and the aid workers around them. Audio ballistics confirmed a minimum of five shooters firing simultaneously, though survivors estimated as many as 30 soldiers were present.
"Earshot forensically analyzed over 900 gunshots fired at aid workers. It took one whole year of careful listening to reconstruct an auditory picture of what happened that dark night."
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earshot's director, described what was essentially a wall of fire directed at people whose vehicles bore emergency markings and flashing lights. The soldiers held an elevated position on a sandbank with an unobstructed sightline. They could see exactly what they were shooting at.
From Ambush to Execution
The sequence began around 4:00 a.m. when the first ambulance, lights on, came under fire on Gush Katif road. The driver, Mustafa Khafaja, and his colleague Ezz El-Din Shaat were killed. A third worker, Munther Abed, survived by throwing himself to the floor. Soldiers then dragged Abed from the vehicle, beat him, and detained him.
When a five-vehicle rescue convoy arrived around 5:09 a.m. to search for the missing ambulance, the soldiers opened fire again. The digital reconstruction shows they first maintained fixed positions on the sandbank, then advanced at a walking pace of roughly one meter per second, firing continuously as they closed the distance.
"The soldiers could clearly see the aid workers, shot at them continuously and deliberately from this position and then approached to execute them one by one at close range."
Samaneh Moafi, Forensic Architecture's assistant director of research, described what the spatial and audio analysis confirmed: soldiers walked between the ambulances and fire truck, firing at point-blank range. At least eight gunshots were fired from positions between the vehicles. One shot captured on a phone call by aid worker Ashraf Abu Libda was fired from as close as one to four meters. Those shots coincide with the last time Abu Libda's voice is heard on the recording.
Autopsy reports confirmed that one aid worker was shot in the head and two others in the chest. A doctor who examined the bodies described the wounds as indicative of execution-style killings.
Shifting Stories
The Israeli military's account of the incident changed multiple times. Initially, after the first body was found on March 27, it admitted soldiers had fired on "ambulances and fire trucks." After the remaining 14 bodies were discovered in a mass grave three days later, the military claimed the vehicles had been "advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals."
Video from one of the slain aid workers' phones, published by the New York Times, showed that claim to be false. The military then backtracked, calling its own statement "inaccurate."
"Following our discovery of the mass grave, the narrative from Israeli forces shifted multiple times; we were fed several versions of a blatant lie."
Jonathan Whittall, a senior UN official in Palestine at the time who was on the ground when the mass grave was found, did not mince words. The dead were medics, found in their uniforms. An internal Israeli military inquiry published April 20 found "professional failures" and "breaches of orders" but recommended no criminal action. The commanding officer of the 14th Brigade received a letter of reprimand. The deputy commander of the Golani reconnaissance battalion was dismissed.
Six of the fifteen dead were retroactively labeled "Hamas terrorists" by the military, without evidence provided to support the claim.
The Legal Framework
Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who reviewed a summary of the investigation, placed the findings within a clear legal context.
"This seems to be a very well documented case using a number of forms of credible evidence that are cross referenced. It presents a very compelling case, and honestly, a very devastating one."
International humanitarian law imposes an affirmative obligation to protect medical personnel in armed conflict. That obligation does not dissolve under suspicion. It is not a suggestion. Gallagher was unequivocal about what the investigation reveals.
"On the specific question of Israel justifying the attack on clearly marked medical personnel because of suspicions of membership in groups or links to groups or terrorism—because there is an affirmative duty to respect and protect medical personnel, you don't shoot first, you protect first. But what this investigation reveals is that there was a shoot first policy, and that is unlawful under international law."
The broader pattern matters here. This was not the first attack on medical workers in Gaza during the conflict, nor the first on journalists or other explicitly protected classes of civilians. Gallagher, who previously worked at the UN's International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia, noted that the Rome Statute imposes obligations, not merely possibilities, to open investigations into grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
"When you zoom out and look at this in the context of the way the Israeli assault has been carried out over many months and years in Gaza and we see that there is a pattern and practice of attacks on medical personnel—similar to journalists and other groups that are explicitly and uniquely protected as classes of civilians in international humanitarian law—it raises even more questions and deep concern about the lack of accountability, because what we know is that impunity breeds repetition."
Erasing the Scene
After the killings, Israeli forces crushed all eight vehicles with heavy machinery and attempted to bury them under sand. Satellite imagery from the morning of the ambush shows extensive earthworks at the site, including berms that later became checkpoints along an evacuation route.
In the weeks that followed, the area was transformed into part of the "Morag Corridor" security zone. A Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution site was erected on the same ground.
"On that same site of the mass grave, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation established a distribution point where desperate people were gunned down trying to access food. Now, the U.S, under the so-called Board of Peace, plans to build a 'New Rafah' over this crime scene. Without meaningful accountability, 'New Rafah' will be a monument to impunity."
Whittall's observation captures something that extends beyond this single incident. The physical transformation of a massacre site into an aid hub, and then potentially into a reconstruction project, layers new purposes over unresolved violence. Whether that amounts to concealment or simply indifference to accountability is a question the international community has so far declined to answer.
Bottom Line
The Earshot and Forensic Architecture investigation offers the most detailed reconstruction yet of the Tel al-Sultan massacre. Its audio and spatial analysis corroborates survivor testimony with forensic precision: soldiers with clear sightlines fired nearly a thousand rounds at marked emergency vehicles, advanced on wounded aid workers, and executed some at point-blank range. The Israeli military's own internal inquiry acknowledged failures but recommended no criminal prosecution. The aid organizations whose workers were killed rejected that outcome. International legal experts say the evidence points to war crimes requiring formal investigation. A year later, none has been opened.