US seeks 'justification' from Israel for strike on media building

The United States has asked Israel to provide evidence that Hamas was operating in the Gaza building housing news bureaus, which was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike over the weekend.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement said he had asked for the evidence to confirm Hamas's presence in the doomed building but has not seen any evidence.

In a news conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, Blinken said that the Biden administration is under immense pressure to ask for a ceasefire in Palestine.

Over the weekend, the Israeli Air Force 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 had 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. But he did not discuss specific intelligence, saying he “will leave it to others to characterize if any information has been shared and our assessment [of] that information.”

But he said he has not seen any information provided.

Blinken’s comments coincided with the United Nations Security Council diplomats and foreign ministers of Muslim states, which called for an end to civilian bloodshed as Israeli warplanes carried out the deadliest single attack in nearly a week of Israeli airstrikes.

Despite the increasing internal and external pressure, President Joe Biden showed no signs of immediate intervention to stop the bloodshed in Palestine.

Though, the US 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."