US Asks Israel To Explain Attack On Gaza’s Biggest Refugee Camp: Report
The US government has asked Israel to explain their strikes on an ambulance convoy and a school-turned-refugee shelter, according to reports. US officials have also urged Israel to use “precision strikes” in their war against Hamas to avoid harming civilians.
Israeli ground forces have encircled Gaza’s largest city, trying to rout Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 raids that killed an estimated 1,400 people inside Israel. They recently bombed a refugee shelter, in which 195 people were killed, according to the Palestine government.
Ambulance teams rushed into the debris-littered building to aid the injured and remove the dead. Stunned onlookers wept and wandered the scene with hands clasped above the head in horror and disbelief.
Israel claims its strikes killed two Hamas military leaders in Jabalia, Gaza’s biggest refugee camp. Israel said the group had command centres and other “terror infrastructure under, around, and within civilian buildings, intentionally endangering Gazan civilians.”
The US government has asked Israel to explain the thinking behind the airstrikes at the refugee camp, according to a Politico report.
“The US asked for an explanation of the first (attack) on Jabalia,” a Biden administration official told Politico, adding that the conversation was in the context of “asking Israel to do more to avoid civilian casualties.”
Israel has so far resisted calls for a humanitarian pause in Gaza Strip claiming that the region is the “centre of the Hamas terror organisation”. It claims it is targeting Hamas militants, weapons stores, tunnel complexes, drone launching posts, and command centres in Gaza.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is conducting meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan today to mitigate the nearly month-long Gaza war after no response from Israel.
Blinken visited Israel yesterday to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enact “humanitarian pauses”, which the United States believes could help secure the release of roughly 240 hostages thought to be in Hamas captivity and to allow aid to be distributed to Gaza’s beleaguered population.
Netanyahu said that he would not agree to a “temporary truce” with Hamas until the Islamist group releases the hostages.