The Israeli military has released a Palestinian paramedic detained when Israeli troops killed 15 other emergency workers in southern Gaza last month, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.

Assad al-Nassasra was missing for three weeks until the International Committee of the Red Cross received information he was in Israeli detention.

He was reportedly one of 10 detainees freed at an Israeli border crossing with Gaza yesterday. The Israeli military has not commented. But it had confirmed it was holding Nassasra during a briefing on an internal inquiry into the attack, which identified “several professional failures”.

The PRCS denounced the findings as an attempt to justify a “war crime”. Eight PRCS paramedics, six first responders from Gaza’s Civil Defence agency, and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) were killed when their ambulances, a fire engine and a UN vehicle came under fire in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah during an emergency call-out early on March 23, reports the BBC.

Their bodies were found buried in shallow graves a week later next to the crushed vehicles.