White House says US waiting for further investigations into Rafah attacks
Washington: The US has no plans to change its Israel policy following a deadly airstrike on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, but it is closely watching an Israeli investigation on the incident, the White House has said.
Palestinian medics on Tuesday said dozens of people had died in fresh Israeli attacks on Rafah, two days after 45 people were reportedly killed in an airstrike which sparked international condemnation.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the US was waiting for further investigations from Israel into the attacks.
“The Israelis are going to investigate it. We’re going to be taking great interest in what they find in that investigation. And we’ll see where it goes from there,” Kirby said.
The US did not consider the attacks as a major military or major ground operation at this point, he said.
“But again, we’re watching it very closely.”
Kirby said the US continued to believe that a large-scale ground offensive in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip was wrong. “We still don’t want to see the Israelis as we say smash into Rafah with large units over over over large pieces of territory. We still believe that and we haven’t seen that at this point. But we’re going to be watching this of course very, very closely.”
US President Joe Biden “said that should that occur, then it might make him have to make different decisions in terms of support”, Kirby said.