WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told two top Israeli officials Monday the civilian casualties in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip were “unacceptably high,” his spokesman said.
The Israeli military has launched several deadly attacks in recent days including close to a refugee camp and multiple UN-run schools where Hamas claimed civilians were sheltering. Israel says Hamas embeds its fighters among the civilian population and uses residential areas as well as UN facilities as bases to launch attacks or store weapons and military equipment.
Blinken received two influential Israeli officials — Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi — “to express our serious concern about the recent civilian casualties in Gaza.”
Casualties “still remain unacceptably high. We continue to see far too many civilians killed in this conflict,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
On Saturday, Israel struck in the area of the Al-Mawasi camp near Khan Younis, saying it targeted two senior people — the head of Hamas’s military wing, Muhammad Deif, and his close associate Rafa’a Salameh, commander of the Khan Younis Brigade. Salameh has been confirmed killed while Deif’s fate remains unknown. The two senior Hamas members were targeted while in a low building in a fenced-off Hamas compound, according to the IDF.
Hamas, without differentiating between civilians and fighters, said the strikes killed more than 90 people. Military sources have said dozens of Hamas gunmen were in the targeted area. Photos have shown victims included children.
The two Israeli officials told Blinken that “they do not have certainty yet” about Deif’s fate, according to Miller.
A Hamas official said Sunday that Deif was “well and directly overseeing” operations. Israeli defense officials have said they increasingly believe Deif did not survive.
Meanwhile on Monday, the IDF said it struck a number of Hamas operatives gathered on the grounds of an UNRWA-affiliated school in Nuseirat in central Gaza. Hamas was using the building as a hiding place and a location from which to plan attacks against Israeli troops operating in Gaza, the military said. The IDF said that prior to the strike it took steps to limit harm to civilians, including using precision weapons and intelligence.
The Hamas-run media office in the Strip said 12 people were killed in the strike on the school grounds, which it claimed was housing displaced people. Health officials in Gaza said only that several people were killed and wounded in the strike.
A New York Times in-depth analysis published Saturday found that Hamas has heavily relied on embedding itself in the enclave’s civilian population as both a method of survival and a way to ambush Israeli troops.
The bilateral discussions in Washington also focused on talks for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and postwar plans, Miller said.
The official visit to Washington comes several few days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to travel to the US to address Congress on July 24.
“We continue to hear from Israel directly that they want to reach a ceasefire and that they’re committed to the proposal that they put forward,” Miller said.
The war began with the massive October 7 cross-border attack led by Hamas in which terrorists killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 251 to Gaza.
Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, topple its Gaza regime, and free the hostages, of whom 116 remain in captivity, many of them believed dead.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 38,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
US President Joe Biden has been under mounting political pressure over the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“We are incredibly troubled by the ongoing deaths of Palestinians in Gaza,” Miller said Monday.