The US State Department expects Israel to release information about the estimated 40 people killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday at a UN school in Gaza where women and children were sheltering, spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a news briefing.
Video footage of the strike showed Palestinians hauling away bodies and dozens of wounded in a local hospital after the attack, which took place at a sensitive moment in mediated talks on a ceasefire that would involve releasing hostages held by Hamas and some of the Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli jails.
Israel claimed it was using precision strikes to target up to 30 Hamas terrorists in only one part of the building without hitting areas where civilians were sheltering, Miller said.
Israel told the US it had been watching the UN building for several days and waiting for the right moment to strike without harming civilians, he said.
Pressuring Israeli gov't and IDF to be transparent
“That’s why we’re pressing the government of Israel and the IDF to be completely transparent about what happened here,” he added. “We want to know the facts as much as anyone; that they have taken every step possible.”
The US has seen the IDF make improvements over time, Miller said, adding that if it bears true that this strike resulted in the deaths of 14 children, “the results aren’t where they need to be.”
Israel told the US it would release the names of the 20 to 30 terrorists believed to have been killed in the strike.
“I think they want to show that they were actually killing militants, not civilians,” Miller said. “That doesn’t obviously obviate the chance that there might have also been civilians that were killed in this strike.”
He would not say if Israel used a US weapon in the school attack.
Israel’s last two attacks have used precision weapons that have been very disruptive, Miller said.
Israel claimed it used the smallest weapons possible to achieve its targets, he said, “but obviously, there’s still reports of civilian harm.”