State Dept Spox Reports: 'We Have Seen An Uptick In Military Operations At The Philadelphi Corridor'

4 months ago

During a press briefing on Thursday, State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel answered reporter questions on the Israel-Hamas war.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Vedant.

00:02On the wording you use on Rafah, you say it's not a major operation, but I mean, 54 people

00:10have been killed in Gaza over the past 24 hours.

00:14Nearly 1 million people have already fled Rafah over the past three weeks as Israeli

00:20strikes continue.

00:22We have seen Israeli tanks in Rafah, although you deny.

00:27Are these acceptable for you?

00:29I mean, is that a line, where is the line, the limit for you to say, okay, this is enough

00:35and this cannot continue anymore?

00:37I'm just not going to preview or try to pinpoint a hypothetical like that, Rabia.

00:46The truth of the facts on the ground are, is that we have yet to see a major military

00:53operation into Rafah.

00:55As I said, we have seen an uptick in military operations at the border in the Philadelphia

01:01Corridor and in the outskirts, but we have not seen a major operation into Gaza.

01:08We are continue – into Rafah, I'm sorry.

01:10We will continue to monitor conditions and we will continue to see what happens.

01:15What would be a major operation?

01:16I mean, what would –

01:18Again, we have been – we have been clear about what this isn't, which is not a major

01:23military operation.

01:24I'm not going to categorize it into one box or another.

01:28This is obviously a very dynamic and fluid situation.

01:31We're going to continue to consult with our partners in Israel and engage on these

01:35issues.

01:36Just a quick follow-up on Tom and Said's question regarding the CNN analysis on U.S.

01:42weapons.

01:43This analysis was based on open source information, like footage.

01:48Why isn't the State Department able to make a similar assessment based on – instead

01:53of relying on the IDF investigation?

01:57We're just not going to speak to individual weapons loadouts on particular aircraft.

02:02That's not something we're going to get into from here, and I will leave it to the IDF

02:07to speak to anything that they want to share as it relates to their findings and an investigation

02:12that they have underway.

02:13Go ahead.

02:14I have a follow-up question.

02:15Go ahead.

State Dept Spox Reports: 'We Have Seen An Uptick In Military Operations At The Philadelphi Corridor'

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