Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel on Oct. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)
| Photo Credit: AP

The United States was looking into a media report that the Israeli military has been using artificial intelligence to help identify bombing targets in Gaza, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Thursday.

Kirby, in the CNN interview, said the U.S. had not verified the content of the media report published in +972 Magazine and Local Call on Wednesday. It cited Israeli intelligence officials involved in the reported program known as “Lavender.”

The Israeli Defense Forces, in statements to the media on Thursday, denied that AI was used to identify suspected extremists and targets.

The media report said the Israeli army had marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using the AI system with little human oversight.

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Kirby, in the CNN interview, was also asked about an Axios report that the Israeli security cabinet had approved the opening of the Erez crossing with Gaza to allow more humanitarian aid to enter.

Kirby said that if true, the opening of the crossing would be “welcome news” and “certainly in keeping” with what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. President Joe Biden in their call on Thursday.

The White House said that Biden, in the call, threatened to condition support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza on its taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians.

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent military assault on Hamas-governed Gaza has killed over 32,000 people, according to the local health ministry, displaced nearly all its population, caused a starvation crisis, and led to genocide allegations that Israel denies.

Washington:

Several people working for US-based charity World Central Kitchen were killed Monday in an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip, according to the organisation’s founder.

World Central Kitchen “lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family,” chef Jose Andres posted on social media site X.

Earlier, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory had said the bodies of four foreign aid workers and their Palestinian driver were brought to the hospital in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah after an Israeli strike targeted their vehicle.

Hamas said in a statement that the aid workers included “British, Australian and Polish nationalities, with the fourth nationality not known”, and that the fifth person killed was a Palestinian driver and translator.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it was “conducting a thorough review at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident”, adding that it had been “working closely with WCK” in the effort to provide aid to Palestinians.

At the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, an AFP correspondent saw five bodies with three foreign passports lying nearby.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was “urgently seeking to confirm reports that an Australian aid worker has died in Gaza. These reports are very distressing.”

World Central Kitchen has been involved in delivering the aid arriving by boat from Cyprus, and in the construction of a temporary jetty in Gaza.

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack, Gaza has been under a near-complete blockade, with the United Nations accusing Israel of preventing deliveries of humanitarian aid urgently needed by 2.4 million Palestinians.

UN agencies have warned repeatedly that northern Gaza is on the verge of famine, calling the situation a man-made crisis because aid lorries are backed up on the Egypt-Gaza border awaiting long checks by Israeli officials. Israel has denied responsibility.

Two charities have organised aid deliveries by sea from Cyprus, with the second flotilla, setting sail Saturday with around 400 tonnes of supplies, a fraction of Gaza’s needs.

Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,845 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)