US says Israel's attack on Rafah will ‘lead to inordinate civilian harm’

The US State Department says there’s no way to safely evacuate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Rafah as the Israeli military prepares a ground invasion.

“We don’t want to see Palestinians evacuated from Rafah unless it is to return to their homes. And we have made that quite clear to the government of Israel,” said spokesman Matthew Miller.

“We don’t think there’s any effective way to evacuate 1.4 million Palestinians. There’s no way to conduct an operation in Rafah that would not lead to inordinate civilian harm and would severely hamper the delivery of humanitarian assistance. And that’s the point that we continue to make to them.”

Al Jazeera’s White House correspondent Kimberly Halkett has the latest from the White House and Bernard Smith is in occupied East Jerusalem for more on the potential ground offensive on Rafah.

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