US doesn’t want to see firefights in Gaza hospitals: Sullivan

ANKARA

The US does not want to see firefights in Gaza hospitals where patients receive treatment and has conveyed its views to the Israeli army, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday.

“So it's an active conversation, but the bottom line is, we don't want to see firefights in hospitals,” Sullivan told CBS News' "Face the Nation" program.

About efforts for the release of captives held by Hamas, he said: “It is the case that there are active negotiations underway between Israel and Qatar, who is communicating with Hamas, and the United States is involved in those discussions, very much involved in those discussions.”

Asked about deaths in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing Israeli attacks, Sullivan said: “We do know there are thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed in the military operations that began after October 7.”

“And every loss of life of an innocent person whether it's Palestinian, Israeli, anyone is an absolute tragedy and we grieve for every one of those lives and we continue to reinforce the proposition that Israel has the right indeed the responsibility to go after Hamas who continues to represent a threat to the State of Israel. But it must do so in a way that's consistent with the laws of war,” he added.

Sullivan noted that there haven’t been elections in Gaza since the early 2000s, and said: "When it comes to governance, and it will ultimately be up to or should be up to the Palestinian people to decide what their future governance looks like. And that should involve a reconnection, as Secretary Blinken has said, of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip -- including hospitals, residences, and houses of worship -- since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Oct. 7.

The number of deaths in the ongoing Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 has surpassed the grim figure of 11,100, including more than 8,000 children and women, the government media office in Gaza said on Sunday.

The Israeli death toll is nearly 1,200, according to official figures.