U.S. Officials Outline Steps to Israel to Reduce Civilian Casualties

U.S. officials said they have privately outlined several steps to Israel to reduce civilian casualties in its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, including using smaller bombs, when going after Hamas leaders and infrastructure.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Friday during a visit to Israel that he had spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about “concrete steps” that the United States believes Israel could and should take to minimize civilian deaths, a message he repeated on Saturday in Jordan after meeting with Arab leaders who demanded an immediate cease-fire.

Mr. Blinken said Israel could put in place the American recommendations “while still achieving its objectives of finding and finishing Hamas terrorists.”

The secretary of state did not specify in his remarks what those “concrete steps” entailed, and his spokesman, Matthew Miller, declined to comment on them.

But U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meetings were private, said there had been a number of conversations in which they had advised their Israeli counterparts to take a more deliberate approach in their operations.

U.S. officials told the Israelis that they could reduce civilian casualties if they improved how they targeted Hamas leaders, gathered more intelligence on Hamas command and control networks before launching strikes, used smaller bombs to collapse the tunnel network and employed their ground forces to separate civilian population centers from where the militants are concentrated.