US troops are directly involved in fighting in Gaza, says Salman al-Harfi, Palestine’s former ambassador to France.
“They not only support [Israel], but are also participating in the war against the Palestinian people. The United States is sending military personnel to the area. They are involved in military operations on the ground in Gaza,” Harfi told Sputnik.
The veteran diplomat did not elaborate on the details of the US deployment.
“We have absolutely no intention nor do we have any plans to send combat troops into Israel, or Gaza, period,” Vice President Harris told Americans in an interview airing on 60 Minutes Sunday.
However, a growing number of reports have alluded to the suspected presence of US troops in the conflict zone.
Sputnik reported on Saturday that the Pentagon has been quietly expanding a previously unacknowledged military base in Israel’s Negev Desert, some 20 miles (32 km) from the Gaza Strip.
Also on Saturday, sources told Iranian media that as many as 5,000 US troops had taken part in a recent overnight ground incursion into Gaza.
Last week, former Trump-era Pentagon advisor Douglas McGregor said in an interview with Tucker Carlson that American and Israeli special ops forces had attempted a joint raid into Gaza “to free hostages and make an impact” but got “shot to pieces and took heavy losses.”
Gaza is known to contain hundreds of kilometers’ worth of underground tunnels designed to facilitate Hamas militants’ movement, and to provide commanders and covert underground military workshop workers with safe spaces which Israeli bombs and missiles can’t reach. Observers have warned that it would be a “nightmare” to penetrate and clear these tunnel networks in any ground incursion.
The three quarters of a century old Palestinian-Israeli crisis burst into a new round of violence on October 7, after Hamas-led militants launched a surprise incursion into southern Israel. Tel Aviv responded with a three-week barrage of air, artillery and missile strikes into Gaza, complemented by limited ground operations in recent days.
Over 8,400 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and 1,413 Israelis have been killed in the escalation to date, with tens of thousands more wounded, some 1.5 million Gaza residents and 200,000 Israelis displaced.
Russia, China, Iran, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa and dozens of other countries have called for an immediate halt to the violence and urgent aid deliveries to Gaza. The United States and Israel have rejected a ceasefire, with officials in Tel Aviv saying they would continue the war until Hamas is destroyed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned over the weekend that the militia could not be destroyed without destroying Gaza.