The White House has condemned the loss of life of dozens of civilians as a result of an Israeli air strike in Rafah but doesn’t believe the military action in the city has crossed its red lines on the conflict.
The Israeli strike and resulting fire on Sunday which the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said had killed 45 people - including women and children - has led to widespread international condemnation.
Israel said it was targeting two senior Hamas officials and that it believes the fire could have been caused by the precision strike exploding a weapons store belonging to the terror group nearby that it was unaware of.
White House spokesperson John Kirby described images from the aftermath of the strike as “heartbreaking” and “horrific” and said “there should be no innocent life lost here as a result of this conflict.”
But he added: “I don’t know how anybody could dispute that they were trying to go after Hamas in a targeted precise way”.
He said the US would wait for the results of Israel’s investigation into the incident, but when asked by reporters whether the strike had violated limits on Israeli military action previously set by US President Joe Biden, he said he had “no policy changes to speak to”.
Mr Biden said this month he would limit weapons supplies to Israel if its forces entered the “population centres” of the southern border town, where hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced from other parts of Gaza by the conflict are believed to be sheltering. Israeli forces yesterday reached the centre of the city and reportedly seized a strategically important hill overlooking the nearby border with Egypt.
Mr Kirby said the action is not yet considered a “major ground operation” in the city that could trigger a change in US policy.
He said: “We have not seen them smash into Rafah - we have not seen them go in with large units, large numbers of troops in columns and formations in some sort of coordinated manoeuvre against multiple targets on the ground. That is a major ground operation. We have not seen that.”
Yesterday Israeli forces were accused of attacking a camp in western Rafah, which had been designated a civilian evacuation zone.
At least 21 people were killed in shelling, more than half of them women, authorities in Gaza said, but Israel’s military denied carrying out a strike.
Rafah was a major entry point for humanitarian relief before Israel stepped up its military offensive on the Gaza side of the border earlier this month and seized control of the crossing from the Palestinian side.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s health ministry says. Israel launched its air and ground war after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages.
