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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israel on Tuesday for “a swift, thorough and impartial investigation” into the attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza on Monday. .
WCK workers “are heroes” and “must be protected”, stressed Blinken at a press conference in Paris together with French Foreign Minister, Stéphane Séjourné.
The American official said that they spoke to the Israeli government to “make them understand that more needs to be done to protect the lives of innocent civilians, be they Palestinian children or humanitarian workers”.
He also considered “simply insufficient” the level of humanitarian aid that Israel allows into Gaza, whose population faces an incipient famine and also lacks medical supplies.
Blinken added that last week he spoke with the Spanish chef based in the United States and founder of WCK, José Andrés, about “the extraordinary and courageous work” that members of that NGO carry out in Gaza to bring food to a population at risk of hunger.
Séjourné, in turn, expressed France’s “firm condemnation” of what Israel defined as an “unintentional” attack by its armed forces as part of its operations in the Gaza Strip.
The conflict in Gaza “in no way justifies this tragedy”, stressed the French Foreign Minister, for whom “the protection of humanitarian workers is a moral and legal imperative”.
But Blinken made it clear that despite this incident, the US government will continue to send weapons to Israel.
“We have a long-standing commitment to Israel’s security and its ability to defend itself,” he stressed. That commitment has been maintained with all administrations in power in Washington, Republican and Democrat, she added.
Blinken recalled that all shipments of weapons and military equipment to Israel, as to any other country, occur within legal parameters and with notification to Congress.
And he specified that, normally, orders and agreements for arms shipments take time, sometimes “years”, until the equipment is produced and can be shipped.
Both reiterated that an immediate ceasefire is necessary in Gaza, where the conflict generated by Hamas attacks against Israel is about to reach its sixth month, with almost 33,000 Palestinian civilian deaths, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas.
Source: Elcomercio
I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.
