‘You Knew There Were Civilians There’: Blitzer Confronts IDF Spox Over Strike on Refugee Camp That Killed Hamas Commander
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer pressed IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht on Tuesday’s bombing of a refugee camp in Gaza that Israel says killed a senior Hamas official who was involved with the Oct. 7 terror attack.
The Times of Israel reported that the IDF said the strike killed the commander of Hamas’s Central Jabaliya Battalion, Ibrahim Biari, and “several other terrorists and caused underground terror tunnels to collapse, bringing down several nearby buildings.”
“Palestinian reports said at least 50 people were killed in the strike and subsequent collapse,” the report added.
Blitzer pressed Hecht on the civilian death toll from the bombing:
But even if that Hamas commander was there, amidst all those Palestinian refugees who are in there in that Jabalya refugee camp, Israel still went ahead and dropped a bomb there attempting to kill this Hamas, Hamas commander, knowing that a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and children presumably would be killed. Is that what I’m hearing?
“That’s not what you are hearing, Wolf. We, again, were focused on this commander, again, who you’ll get more data who this man was. Killed, many, many Israelis. And we’re doing everything we can. It’s a very complicated battle space. There could be infrastructure there. There could be tunnels there. And we’re still looking into and we’ll give you more data as the hour moves ahead,” Hecht replied.
“But you know that there are a lot of refugees, a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and children in that refugee camp as well. Right?” Blitzer followed up.
“This is the tragedy of war, Wolf. I mean, we as you know, we’ve been saying for days, ‘Move south, civilians that are not involved with Hamas, please move south,’” Hecht replied.
Blitzer continued, “Just trying to get more information. You knew there were civilians there. You knew there were refugees, all sorts of refugees. But you decided to still drop a bomb on that refugee camp attempting to kill this Hamas commander. By the way, was he killed?”
“I can’t confirm yet. There’ll be more updates,” Hecht replied regarding the civilian toll.
“Yes, we know that he was killed and about the civilians there. We’re doing everything we can to minimize. I’ll tell you again, sadly, they are hiding themselves within the civilian population. And again, we are doing this stage by stage and we’re going to go after every one of these terrorists who was involved in that hideous attack on the 7th of October, Wolf,” Hecht added as the interview had some audio issues.
Watch the full clip above via CNN.
