A forensic doctor who examined the bodies of some of the 15 paramedics and Palestinian rescue workers shot dead by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza has said there is evidence of execution-style killing, based on the “specific and intentional” location of shots at close range.

Ahmad Dhaher, a forensic consultant who examined five of the dead at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after they had been exhumed, said all of them had died from bullet wounds. “All cases had been shot with multiple bullets, except for one, which could not be determined due to the body being mutilated by animals like dogs, leaving it almost as just a skeleton,” Dhaher told the Guardian.

“Preliminary analysis suggests they were executed, not from a distant range, since the locations of the bullet wounds were specific and intentional,” he said. “One observation is that the bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”