Blinken reacts to 'horrific' Rafah strike, questions whether Israeli gains are worth consequences
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about the catastrophic strike over the weekend in Rafah -- becoming the first top-level U.S. official to publicly respond to the attack in detail.
"The incident a couple days ago was horrific," he said. "I don't think anyone who has seen the images cannot be deeply affected by them, just on a basic human level."
Blinken was also asked about reports indicating that the U.S. supplied the weapons used in the strike; he said he couldn't yet say where they came from, but if Israel's claims that it used small diameter munitions were true, the incident illustrated how even precision attacks could cause immense damage to civilians in Rafah.
"I think we also see that even limited, focused, targeted attacks, designed to deal with terrorists who've killed innocent civilians that are plotting to kill more -- even those kinds of operations can have terrible, horrific, unintended consequences," he said.
Blinken then said it was "very important in this moment after Israel has had real success in helping to destroy Hamas' capacity to repeat October 7th" that Israel "has to ask whether, and especially in the absence of a plan for the day after in Gaza, further incremental gains against Hamas, but gains that may not be durable in terms of Hamas' defeat in the absence of a plan--how that stacks up against some of the, again, unintended, but horrific consequences of military action in a place where the people you're going after are so closely embedded with civilians."
-ABC News' Shannon Crawford
