Washington: Rejecting accusations that Israel carried out a genocide in Gaza, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said there was no ‘evidence’ of it.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticised the international community for failing to hold Hamas accountable, while US Defence Secretary Austin denied claims that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, according to The Times of Israel.
Both officials insisted that Israel must guarantee long-term improvements to the humanitarian situation in the enclave.
“We don’t have any evidence of genocide being created,” Austin said in testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee regarding US President Joe Biden’s latest budget request, The Times of Israel reported.
Austin’s statement came a day after Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren shared a video on her social media handle, asserting that the International Court of Justice should find Israel guilty of genocide because there was ‘ample evidence’.
Austin referred to the horrors carried out by Hamas on October 7 as a ‘war crime’ but refrained from calling them a genocide at the hearing on Tuesday.
Austin made these remarks during a session that was often disrupted by far-left protesters yelling at him to cease supplying Israel with arms, The Times of Israel reported.
They raised their hands, stained in red, in the air and yelled, “Stop the genocide.”
Several senators expressed their outrage at the civilian deaths and insisted that more was needed to be done by the administration to put pressure on Israel to save the Gaza population.
Six months have elapsed since Hamas launched a brutal onslaught on Israel, resulting in widespread devastation and loss of life. Despite the passage of time, 134 hostages remain in Hamas’ captivity, their fate hanging in the balance amidst ongoing efforts to secure their release.
The Israel Defence Forces have withdrawn all ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip after a four-month fight in the Khan Younis area, The Times of Israel reported.
As the country marked six months of war against Hamas, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) published new data on its operations in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Lebanon, highlighting everything from the number of terror operatives killed to the number of sites struck.
According to the data, more than 13,000 Hamas operatives and members of other terror groups have been killed by the IDF in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7, when gunmen rampaged through southern communities, massacring some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 253 to Gaza.
The data presented by the IDF further stated that the military has killed five Hamas brigade commanders and those of an equivalent rank, as well as more than 20 battalion commanders.
Since October 7, in the West Bank, the IDF said the troops have arrested more than 3,700 Palestinians, including more than 1,600 affiliated with Hamas.
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