US President Joe Biden said he is “outraged and heartbroken” after an Israeli air strike in Gaza killed seven aid workers Monday. He admitted the strike was “not a stand-alone incident” and that Israel has “not done enough to protect civilians.”
“They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war,” Biden wrote in a statement Tuesday. “They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy.”
He wrote that Israel had “pledged to conduct a thorough investigation” into the incident, but that the “investigation must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public.”
“Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident,” Biden wrote. “This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed. This is a major reason why distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult – because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians.”
He said that incidents like this “simply should not happen,” and that “Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians.”