John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said on Tuesday that Israel would continue to harm “innocent civilians” in its attack on Gaza.

When asked if the United States believed the Israeli bombing was a disproportionate response to Hamas' attack on southern Israel on October 7, Kirby said, "It's war. It's fighting. It's bloody, it's ugly, it's going to be messy, and innocent civilians will be hurt in the future."

"I wish I could tell you something different and I wish it wouldn't happen, but it will happen. And that doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it undeniable," Kirby added.

He also reiterated US opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza, claiming that it would only benefit Hamas. Both Kirby and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States is open to the idea of a “humanitarian truce” to allow more aid into Gaza.

Kirby insisted that the United States would continue to urge Israel to reduce civilian casualties, but Israel doubled its bombing of the Gaza Strip, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted on Tuesday that the air strikes launched the previous day were the most difficult to occur.

Although Kirby depicted civilian casualties as a fact of modern warfare, Israeli bombing was particularly brutal, with Israeli attacks leveling entire neighborhoods to the ground. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, after 18 days of bombing, at least 6,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, including 2,360 children (according to UNICEF).

Kirby questioned the casualty numbers issued by the Ministry of Health in Gaza due to Hamas' control of the ministry.

However, experts estimate that the number of victims will be more than that because hundreds of them are still under the rubble, and this is consistent with Israeli statements, as Israel boasted about the size of the Israeli bombing unit, as the Israeli authorities stated that in only the first six days of its attack, Israeli forces shot down 6,000 bombs on Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on Earth. By comparison, the United States dropped 7,423 bombs on Afghanistan in 2019, the most since the United States began keeping a tally in 2006.

On the 18th day of the war on Gaza, Israeli aircraft continued to bomb civilians relentlessly, and the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip documented during the past hours 47 massacres that left 704 martyrs, which raises the total toll within two weeks to about 6,000 martyrs, most of them children and women, in addition to More than 15 thousand infected.