December 19, 2023 / 01:35 PM
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that while the administration expressed “specific concerns” about the killing of two civilian Christian women in Gaza’s only Catholic church, it is confident that The Israelis “are not making the killing, torture and rape of civilians in Gaza a war objective.”
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said on Saturday that “around noon” on December 16, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper “murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family parish in Gaza, where the “Most Christian families have taken refuge since the start of the war.”
Kirby said the White House “raised that specific incident” to Israeli authorities and urged them to “be as careful, deliberate, surgical and cautious as possible to minimize civilian casualties.”