Washington
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday he has asked Israel for any evidence of Hamas operating in a Gaza building, housing news bureaus, which was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike over the weekend, but hasn’t seen any.
Blinken spoke at a news conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, as pressure is increasing on the Biden administration to ask for a ceasefire in the latest flare-up between Israel and Hamas — the Gaza Strip’s rulers.
Israel destroyed a building housing The Associated Press and Al Jazeera offices and claimed that Hamas used the building for a military intelligence office.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the building a “perfectly legitimate target”, and said in a televised address on Sunday that Israel passes such evidence through intelligence channels.
“Shortly after the strike we did request additional details regarding a justification for it,” Blinken said on Monday.
He declined to discuss specific intelligence, saying he “will leave it to others to characterise if any information has been shared and our
assessment [of] that information”.
But he said, “I have not seen any information provided.” Blinken’s comments came after United Nations Security Council diplomats and foreign ministers of Muslim states convened emergency weekend meetings to demand a stop to civilian bloodshed
as Israeli warplanes carried out the deadliest single attack in nearly a week of Israeli airstrikes.
US President Joe Biden gave no signs of stepping up public pressure on Israel to agree to an immediate ceasefire despite calls from some Democrats for the Biden administration to get more involved.
His ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told an emergency high-level meeting of the Security Council that the US was “working tirelessly through diplomatic channels” to stop the fighting.—AP
