By Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States opposes the bombing campaign that Israel has carried out in Beirut in past weeks and has communicated its concerns particularly over the civilian death toll, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Tuesday.
“There are specific strikes that it would be appropriate for Israel to carry out. But when it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut for the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to,” Miller said.
The civilian death toll was among Washington’s concerns, he said, without elaborating.
Miller’s comments represent a harsher tone than Washington has adopted so far toward Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, which Israel says are aimed at degrading Iran-aligned Hezbollah and pushing its forces north and away from the border.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombing campaign of Lebanon in recent weeks, hitting Hezbollah’s strongholds of south Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut and the eastern Bekaa region. Other areas of Lebanon have also been hit.
The hostilities had been playing out along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel since October last year in parallel with Israel’s offensive in Gaza that was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, the Lebanese health ministry said, and more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced. The majority have been killed since late September when Israel expanded its military campaign.
Miller said Washington has seen Israeli bombing of Beirut diminish in recent days, adding that the United States would continue to monitor the situation.
“We’ve seen them come down over the past few days, which is not a prediction about what will happen in the future,” he said.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Susan Heavey and Daphne Psaledakis; editing by Deepa Babington)