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Added on the 12/02/2024 19:19:08 - Copyright : AFPTV - First images
The United States says it still opposes a major Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a date was set. With some 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah, "We have made clear to Israel that we think a full-scale military invasion of Rafah would have an enormously harmful effect on those civilians and that it would ultimately hurt Israel security," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller tells reporters. SOUNDBITE
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken renewes US opposition to an Israeli offensive on Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah, ahead of his trip to Israel. SOUNDBITE
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday paints a dark picture of the situation in the Middle East, warning that spiraling tensions over the war in Gaza and Iran's attack on Israel could devolve into a "full-scale regional conflict." SOUNDBITE
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tells reporters that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to send a team to Washington to discuss a potential military operation in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. SOUNDBITE
The White House says it wants to see Israel's plan for an operation in Gaza's Rafah that protected civilians, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the military's proposal for an offensive. "We haven't seen it. We certainly would welcome the opportunity to see it," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says, adding that the United States could not support any plan without "credible" proposals to shelter more than one million Gazans. SOUNDBITE
U.S. President Barack Obama attends an outdoor arrival ceremony in heavy rain, as the first sitting U.S. president to visit Laos. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).