US issues guarded approval for Israel as it calls for more fuel deliveries

The US said Monday it had seen some improvement by Israel in narrowing targets in its Gaza offensive, issuing a guarded approval, if Israel were to accelerate its offensive into southern Gaza.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller added that "the numbers of displaced persons will hopefully be lower in southern Gaza than it was in the north". 

President Biden has repeatedly said he doesn’t want to see a forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, which Arab states have said is a red line. 

"We've seen a much more targeted request for evacuations" than in the earlier campaign in the north, Miller, added, ”so that is an improvement on what's happened before.”

Miller said that the US was urging Israel to take additional steps to protect civilians, but said that civilian casualties were “sadly true in all wars”.

The most notable sign of criticism came when Miller said that Israel had stopped allowing fuel into Gaza early on Friday after the breakdown of the truce.

"We had some very frank conversations with them about the need for fuel to come in and saw some fuel going in Friday," he said.

"We saw additional fuel go in Saturday, but it's at the level of fuel that we were at before the pause began," he said. 

"We've made clear we want to see it back up not just to the level of fuel that went in during the pause, but actually higher."