Biden officials grilled over reports US bomb was used in Israeli strike on Gaza school

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The Biden administration offered more vague sentiments of worry and concern but no concrete response on Monday after a CNN report revealed that at least one US-supplied bomb was used by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to strike a school where refugees and, allegedly, Hamas militants were sheltering — killing more than 90.

Officials at the State Department and White House were pressed at their respective briefings on whether the US could say definitively that American bombs had been used in the strike at the al-Tabaeen school, which was carried out in the early Saturday morning hours in Gaza’s Al-Daraj neighborhood. Citing Israeli military sources, CNN reported that several smaller bombs were used in the strike, though it wasn’t clear if more than one had been supplied by the US.

Eyewitness accounts reported by Al Jazeera and other media outlets on the ground in Gaza claimed that the strike occurred during dawn prayers, without warning. Women, children, and the elderly were reported among the dead, with bodies described as having been torn apart and found wholly unrecognizable. Israeli officials claimed that 19 militants were killed in the attack.

At the State Department, deputy spokesman Vedant Patel was forced to assure reporters on Monday that the US did have an internal review process to determine how munitions it supplied to other countries were being used, after being pressed repeatedly on the strike and initially telling one journalist that he “wouldn’t speculate” on whether US-made bombs were used.

“I’m not going to get into the specifics of the information that we solicit [from Israel],” said Patel. “What I can just say is that we are engaged with our partners in the IDF about this.”

Patel was questioned by a second reporter in his briefing on whether “the State Department [is] trying to verify that information or not,” referring to the alleged use of US-supplied bombs. The State spokesman would not confirm this; instead, he offered only a broader assurance that the US government does review the use of its munitions by strategic military partners abroad.

“I'm wondering if there is this systematic effort at this building to monitor how US weapons are being used,” asked Humeyra Pamuk of Reuters.

“Of course there is, which we have talked about a number of times in this briefing room,” Patel responded. “There are of course, a number of tools and levers at the United States’ disposal to continue to ensure that US security assistance is used within appropriate confines of international humanitarian law.”

Declining to speak further about the “ongoing and deliberative processes,” he added that the effort to monitor the use of US-supplied weapons was “an ongoing around the clock effort.”

At the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby offered a similar response, telling a journalist he “can’t confirm reports about what weapon was used in this strike” while calling the deaths of civilians in the attack a “tragedy.”

The use of US munitions in the Saturday morning attack on the compound where dozens of refugees were reportedly sheltering, if confirmed, would follow a pattern of Israel using bombs manufactured and supplied by its American allies in attacks which resulted in high numbers of civilian deaths.

As the network did in the case of the al-Tabaeen school, CNN also verified the use of US-supplied bombs in other Israeli attacks, including the May bombing of a tent camp in Rafah housing refugees as well a July strike in Khan Younis.

In each case, Israeli officials have claimed that they were targeting Hamas militants acting in the areas of the attacks. US officials have backed up those assertions with repeated reminders to reporters that Hamas allegedly frequently hides personnel and command centers in civilian population centers to avoid destruction.

But as with previous strikes, Israel’s military has offered no definitive proof yet that Hamas militants were active at the al-Tabaeen school, and human rights advocates argue that the supposed presence of militants does not justify the slaughter of civilians present in the area.

Palestinian health authorities have reported more than 39,000 people dead as the result of a now nearly year-long Israeli military siege of the densely-populated Gaza Strip. Accurate casualty reporting in more recent months has grown especially difficult given the near-total collapse of any hospital system in the region. A significant number of military operations have been carried out in the southern region of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of refugees had fled, though the US has said that Israel’s attacks on that area have not constituted a breach of the “red line” President Joe Biden outlined in an interview earlier this year.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who took over the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket after Biden stepped down as his party’s nominee last month, responded to the attack on the al-Tabaeen school at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, over the weekend.

“I have been clear: now is the time to get a ceasefire deal and get the hostage deal done...Now is the time. And the president and I are working around the clock every day to get that ceasefire deal done and bring the hostages home,” she said.