"My heart and soul died when Rifaat was killed," says Hajjah Umm Mohammed, the mother of a Palestinian paramedic who was one of 15 emergency workers killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza last month.
Rifaat Radwan, 23, was travelling in a Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulance in a convoy of emergency vehicles when it came under fire on the outskirts of Rafah on 23 March.
"I never expected him to be killed, especially since the area was classified as 'green', meaning safe and open to ambulances," she adds.
The Israeli military initially claimed the troops opened fire because the convoy approached them "suspiciously" in darkness without headlights or flashing emergency lights.
However, video filmed by Rifaat and found on his phone after his body was recovered, showed the vehicles' lights were on as they answered a call to help wounded people.
"Forgive me, mother… this is the path I chose to help people," Rifaat can be heard saying in the video shortly before he was killed, amid the sound of heavy gunfire.
Umm Mohammed believes he was asking for her forgiveness because he knew she would never see him again.
"I entrusted Rifaat to God every time he went out to work," she says. "He was brave, travelling across Gaza from north to south."
Rifaat began volunteering with the PRCS after Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza following Hamas's unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023.
Umm Mohammed says her son enjoyed humanitarian work.
"He even transported the wounded to cross into Egypt for treatment through the Rafah crossing."
Umm Mohammed explains that on the day he died, Rifaat had gone out with an ambulance after reports of several killed in an Israeli air strike.
"I didn't know he would be one of them [too]," she says.
It was a week before his body and those of his colleagues were found buried in a shallow grave on 30 March.
"Instead of celebrating Eid al-Fitr with Rifaat, we went with the Red Cross to collect his body from Nasser hospital in Khan Younis to bury him," she recalls.
"It was badly decomposed and they wouldn't allow me to see it."
Umm Mohammed says he was an "absolutely beautiful" human being and the sole supporter of her and his father after all his siblings got married.
