Days after the United Nations accused Israel of killing 15 humanitarian workers in Gaza, officials who recovered the bodies or carried out the autopsies said some of the rescue workers were shot multiple times before being buried in a mass grave.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society, which had eight of its members killed and carried out the recovery mission, said that nearly all 15 bodies showed gunshot wounds, according to a spokeswoman, Nebal Farsakh. One paramedic was found with his hands and feet tied toward his body, Ms. Farsakh said.

“My colleagues were shot; the bodies who were retrieved, many of them have multiple gun shots. We found all of them thrown in a mass grave, the bodies were put next to each other and covered with sand,” said Ms. Farsakh in a telephone interview from Ramallah.

The deaths of the aid workers, who first went missing on March 23, have drawn international condemnation in recent days.

On that day, in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, ambulances and a U.N. vehicle came under attack from Israel’s military, then went silent. On Sunday, rescue teams found 15 bodies, most in a shallow mass grave along with their crushed ambulances and the vehicle marked with the U.N. logo. The United Nations, which is typically cautious about assigning blame, accused Israel of killing them.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said on X on Monday that nine of those killed were Palestinian militants. He said Israeli forces “did not randomly attack” an ambulance, but that several vehicles “were identified advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals toward Israeli troops, prompting them to shoot.

“When Hamas terrorists operate in active combat zones — while using humanitarian vehicles as cover, launching rockets from hospitals and stealing aid — Israel will do whatever it takes to protect its soldiers and citizens,” said Jonathan Harounoff, a spokesman for Israel’s mission to the U.N.

Dr. Ahmad Dhair, a forensic expert at the Nasser hospital in the Gazan city of Khan Younis, examined five bodies belonging to the humanitarian workers on Monday. He said in a telephone interview from Gaza that he had found multiple bullet wounds in four of the bodies and some appeared shot at close range. The fifth was decomposed beyond recognition, Dr. Dhair said.

He plans to examine the rest of the bodies on Thursday. One of the four had bruises on the wrist with linear marks on the skin, Dr. Dhair said, adding that further investigations were required to determine if any of the victims had been tied up.

“Some of them were shot in the head from behind,” Dr. Dhair said. He said he also saw gunshot wounds in the torso and the chest, adding that the shoulder and elbow joints were also targeted.

Dr. Dhair’s assessment was first reported in The Guardian.

Two senior U.N. officials and a senior official from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies confirmed they had seen reports from colleagues on the ground who took part in the recovery mission that indicated the humanitarian workers had been shot. The officials asked not to be named because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The United Nations in New York on Wednesday also gave more details of what occurred on March 23, saying the attack was a grave violation of laws protecting humanitarian workers in conflict zones. The organization called for an independent investigation.

Jonathan Whittall, the head of U.N.’s humanitarian agency for the Palestinian territories, said that all the paramedics, members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, were still wearing their uniforms and gloves when they were found. They had been traveling in marked vehicles and had not posed a threat to anyone, he added.

“They were being dispatched into Rafah as Israeli forces were advancing into the area. The ambulances were hit one by one as they advanced, as they entered into Rafah,” said Mr. Whittall, who participated in the rescue operation and was among the team who found the bodies.

Ms. Farsakh said the humanitarian workers had not carried any weapons and had been dispatched to aid wounded civilians caught in Israeli strikes.

One member of the Palestine Red Crescent Society is still missing. And one other, who was riding in the first ambulance, was detained by the Israeli military and later released, Ms. Farsakh said. He recounted that Israel sprayed the ambulances with heavy gunfire, and two of his colleagues sitting in the front were killed, Ms. Farsakh said.

Ms. Farsakh said in addition to their field findings and witness testimony indicating that Israel killed the aid workers, one of the paramedics in an ambulance called the dispatch center while they were under attack, reporting that the Israeli military had opened fire on their convoy and all of them were injured.

The nation’s most polluting coal-burning power plant has asked President Trump to exempt it from stricter limits on hazardous air pollution after the administration recently invited companies to apply for presidential pollution waivers by email.

The aging Colstrip power plant in Colstrip, Mont., emits more harmful fine particulate matter pollution, or soot, than any other power plant in the nation, Environmental Protection Agency figures show. A new rule adopted by the Biden administration in 2023 would have compelled the facility — the only coal plant in the country to lack modern pollution controls — to install new equipment.

Now, the Colstrip plant has applied for a two-year exemption to those rules, according to Montana’s congressional delegation, which backed the request.

The new pollution standard “endangers the economic viability of the plant, which if closed, would undermine the region’s electric grid,” Senator Steve Daines and other members of the delegation wrote in a letter sent on Monday to the E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin. “Without Colstrip, consumers would bear the burden of higher energy costs and grid unreliability, and its closure would stymie economic development in the region.”

Health experts noted that the letter didn’t address the health effects of the fine pollution particles. Numerous studies have shown the particles are small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, where they can travel to the heart and other organs, increasing mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

A 2023 study showed that coal-burning power stations, in particular, emit fine particulates containing sulfur dioxide linked with higher mortality than other types of pollution.

This pollution “can be very damaging to young kids in particular, who have developing lungs,” said Robert Merchant, a pulmonologist in Billings, Mont. The delegation’s letter, he said, shows “a complete indifference to the health harms.”

The Colstrip plant’s request for an exemption from stricter pollution rules came after the E.P.A. told companies last month that they could apply for waivers to major clean-air rules by emailing the agency. The E.P.A. pointed to a section of the Clean Air Act that enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial facilities from new rules if the technology required to meet those rules isn’t available, and if it’s in the interest of national security.

The Trump administration has also announced its intention to roll back a slew of rules entirely, which could eventually mean that plants like the one in Colstrip would not have to meet new pollution standards at all.

The move was part of a wider effort by Mr. Zeldin to steer the agency away from its original role of environmental protection and regulation and toward making energy and cars more affordable.

NorthWestern Energy Group and Talen Energy, which operate the plant along with other minority owners, did not immediately respond to comment.

Any exemption granted by the Trump administration is likely to face legal challenges from environmental groups. In drawing up the new rules, the Biden administration had identified technology already available that would allow the Colstrip facility to meet stricter standards, and that had been widely adopted by other coal plants in the country.

The Biden administration also estimated that the new pollution control technology would cost far less to install than the $500 million the Colstrip plant has said it would take.

“These technologies are available,” said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, “but Colstrip decided not to invest when every other coal plant in the nation did.”

President Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs on America’s trading partners has widened the rift between the United States and some of its closest allies while reconfiguring the global economic order.

Mr. Trump’s plan, which he unveiled on Wednesday and is calling “reciprocal,” would impose a wave of tariffs on dozens of other countries. Among major economies hardest hit were the European Union, which will face 20 percent tariffs under the plan, and China, which will absorb an additional 34 percent on top of existing levies.

“The scope and size of tariffs are both substantial and confirm the worst fears of the proponents of free trade,” said Eswar Prasad, professor in the Dyson School at Cornell University. “Trump is setting off a new era of protectionism that will reverberate worldwide.”

Mexico and Canada, two of the United States’ biggest trading partners, would not be subject to any new tariffs beyond the levies the president had previously announced, on imported vehicles, vehicle parts, steel, aluminum, and any other goods not traded under the rules of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The new levies include a base line 10 percent tariff on all countries except Canada and Mexico, as well as additional tariffs based on the tariffs other nations apply to U.S. exports and other barriers the administration has deemed unfair.

The announcement Wednesday was the latest step in a trade war that has been developing for weeks. Mr. Trump has already imposed steel and aluminum tariffs, announced car tariffs and threatened retaliatory tariffs on European alcohol. He has threatened — and then backed away from — steep levies on goods coming from Canada and Mexico, while imposing a different set on China.

The many-fronted assault has left global partners reeling.

“It is forcing U.S. allies, which have taken for granted for decades that they can count on the U.S., to re-evaluate,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, which supports free trade. “It is already changing America’s role in the world.”

European allies have announced plans to retaliate to an earlier wave of steel and aluminum tariffs, and they have been clear that they could respond to the growing trade conflict by creating barriers for services like big technology companies. Others, like Australia and Britain, have chosen a more wait-and-see approach.

The common thread is that many of America’s friends increasingly find themselves playing defense against Washington, a posture that could change international relations and the global order for years to come.

For countries like the E.U., “it is a very high number,” said Jorn Fleck, senior director with the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, explaining that the adjustment to such tariffs would be very painful for consumers, workers and businesses.

“These supply chains, you can’t shift them over night,” Mr. Fleck said. “This ignores how a highly integrated trans-Atlantic relationship works.”

Many are questioning what the end goals might be. Mr. Trump has at times argued that he wants to force companies including automakers and drugmakers to produce in the United States. He has also said that the point is simply to rectify unfairness. And he has said tariffs will help to pay for tax cuts.

For America’s global partners, the purpose matters. If the point is to make the trading system more fair, that would suggest an openness to negotiation. Europe could fiddle with any tariffs on cars, for instance, to try to press the Trump administration to take a less aggressive stance.

If the point is to raise money for American coffers, that’s a more difficult starting point for trading partners. In that case, finding an agreement that reduces the planned tariffs would mean reducing any potential revenues.

Given the uncertainty, America’s partners have been trying to learn as much as they can about what’s coming, while rolling out measured responses.

Europe, for instance, has taken a more aggressive posture than many individual nations — announcing plans for retaliatory tariffs on whiskey, motorcycles, farm goods and a wide range of other products in response to steel and aluminum levies. But it has already delayed those measures until the middle of April, and policymakers have yet to announce exactly how they will react to the latest round of tariffs.

Instead, officials have made it clear that they are willing to respond forcefully — including, perhaps, by using a recently created tool that would allow them to relatively quickly place penalties like tariffs or market access restrictions on American technology companies like Google. The tool could also be used to hit other service firms, like banks and other financial services providers, outside lawyers and analysts have suggested.

“Europe holds a lot of cards,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said earlier this week. “From trade to technology to the size of our market.”

The goal would be to gain leverage. E.U. nations are trying to throw around the weight of the 27-nation bloc’s consumer market to force Washington to negotiate.

That is also why the bloc is, so far, sticking together. Many European nations have made the calculus that, with their combined populations and markets, they are more powerful united.

Still, plans to push back have been made more difficult because other geopolitical topics have become closely interlinked to the trade conflict.

For Europe, military goals and technology regulation have become caught in the dispute. The United States wants the European Union to shoulder more of the burden for its own defense while also dialing back restrictions on large technology companies, including regulations meant to ensure that they are enforcing content standards.

For instance, a White House memo from February suggested that the Trump administration would “consider responsive actions like tariffs” to combat European taxes on digital services and said that two key European technology regulations — the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act — would “face scrutiny.”

The question is how quickly a response will come. European leaders, for instance, have made it clear that they first want to digest the details of the latest round of tariffs.

“They don’t want to escalate — the desire is to do deals,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a political research firm. But, he added, there is a risk that the situation escalates and that Europe could be coming after American services within the coming weeks and months.

“You’ve got to flex economic muscle to be credible with this administration,” he noted.

Paulina Villegas contributed reporting from Mexico City.

Democratic senators sent a letter to the Trump administration on Wednesday criticizing what they called the paltry U.S. aid response to the earthquake in Myanmar, where China and Russia have sent rescue and relief teams.

The six senators said in the letter that the United States appeared to be failing the first test of its ability to respond to a humanitarian crisis in the wake of the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to foreign aid and dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, the main aid agency.

“We are deeply concerned that the administration’s response is failing to meet both our moral and strategic objectives — sending a signal to countries around the world that our adversaries are more reliable and trustworthy than the United States,” the senators wrote.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter, which was organized by the offices of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking member on the Banking Committee, and Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who is on the Foreign Relations Committee. The other senators who signed were Tim Kaine of Virginia, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The senators sent it to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Mr. Rubio and a political appointee at the State Department, Pete Marocco, oversaw the slashing of foreign aid, and Mr. Bessent’s agency oversees financial sanctions on Myanmar. The senators said in the letter that the U.S. government should grant sanctions waivers to any earthquake relief going into Myanmar.

The United States did not send any specialist aid teams to Myanmar after the earthquake hit on Friday. More than 2,700 people have died as buildings there and in neighboring Thailand collapsed, according to the ruling authoritarian military leaders of Myanmar. The junta asked other nations for help. China, Russia and India sent teams and supplies, as did Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.

As of this past weekend, the United States had not even managed to get a three-person assessment team into the country, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

The State Department spokesman said on Friday that crisis teams were on standby, but the severe cuts since late January have decimated the infrastructure for the U.S. government’s Disaster Assistance Response Teams. Many of the contractor specialists for those teams were fired in the U.S.A.I.D. cuts, and the agency’s offices in Washington that would help with transportation and payment logistics have been hobbled.

Two agency employees who had expected to be posted this winter to Myanmar and Thailand as humanitarian advisers were told by senior officials weeks ago to stay in Washington because the positions had been cut. On Friday, as those two employees and other colleagues were coordinating responses to the earthquake, they received agencywide emails telling them they would be laid off. The emails told everyone to go home that day.

The Trump administration has also cut contracts for transportation used to send firefighters and rescue workers in Virginia and Southern California to global disaster zones when requested by other countries.

The total US. government annual spending on foreign aid had been less than one percent of the federal budget.

The United States Embassy in Myanmar announced on Sunday that it would send up to $2 million in aid, much less than recent American administrations have sent for similar disasters.

The senate letter cited the Times story from Sunday that revealed the shortcomings of the Trump administration’s response.

“Even as the administration has wittingly undercut our ability to efficiently save lives and promote U.S. interests, we call on the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. to rapidly assess what the United States can still do for people in Burma, including with resources already in the region,” the senators said, using the U.S. government’s preferred name for Myanmar.

They added that the Treasury Department should authorize “all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts in Burma that would otherwise be prohibited by U.S. sanctions.”

On Monday, Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, said the U.S. government’s assessment team was “in the process of being present right there,” and that disaster experts in Washington, Manila and Bangkok were trying to help.