As scheduled, a phone conversation between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold since the Israeli strikes on Monday killed the employees of the US-based charity World Central Kitchen.
Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the attack which sparked strong condemnation worldwide including from a host of national leaders, the UN secretary-general and the pope.
Biden and Netayahu were also expected to discuss Israel’s plans to send ground forces into Gaza’s densely crowded far-southern city of Rafah, and Israel’s wider conflict with Iran and its allies after it was blamed for a deadly strike on the Iranian consulate building in Syria’s capital.
The US president has supported Israel in the almost six-month-old war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack and kept up military supplies to its regional bedrock ally.
But, amid rising domestic anger at the war in a US election year, his administration has also voiced frustration with Israel’s right-wing premier over the conduct of the war and the suffering of Gazans.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also “expressed his outrage” at the aid workers’ killings — which Israel has admitted to and pledged to investigate — in a phone call with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant, the Pentagon said.
Austin stressed the need to protect aid workers and civilians and for “a rapid increase of aid” into Gaza, “particularly to communities in northern Gaza that are at risk of famine”.
Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, including in Rafah, and bring home the hostages, while pledging to move the more than one million civilians in the city out of harm’s way first.
Austin said the aid charity “tragedy reinforced the expressed concern over a potential Israeli military operation in Rafah, specifically focusing on the need to ensure the evacuation of Palestinian civilians and the flow of humanitarian aid”.
The Israeli army said Gallant and Austin had discussed “plans to expand operations to address Hamas’ remaining battalions and military capabilities”.
It said the two had also “discussed the threat posed by Iran and its proxy activities”, after Israel was blamed for the Damascus strike Monday that killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.
Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed in a social media message that “with God’s help we will make the Zionists repent of their crime of aggression against the Iranian consulate in Damascus”.
The Israeli military said Thursday that, after a “situational assessment, it was decided to increase manpower and draft reserve soldiers to the IDF Aerial Defense Array”.
Join our WhatsApp community via https://goquick.ly/cj8q2 for instant and latest news updates.
