• 2 months ago
Hundreds of handheld pagers exploded near simultaneously across Lebanon and in parts of Syria on Tuesday, killing at least eight people, including members of the militant group Hezbollah and a girl, and wounding the Iranian ambassador, government and Hezbollah officials said.
Transcript
00:00So we are gathering information on this incident.
00:03I can tell you that the U.S. was not involved in it.
00:07The U.S. was not aware of this incident in advance, and at this point we're gathering
00:11information.
00:12And what information have you gathered so far?
00:14We'll continue to collect information.
00:16I don't have any public readout to give now, but we're collecting information in the same
00:21way that journalists are across the world to gather facts about what might have happened.
00:25So I never want to either comment or speculate about the impact of any one incident, especially
00:30in the early stages of an incident.
00:33And I'm not going to do so here.
00:34That's been our consistent policy to try and avoid doing.
00:36I will say that our overall policy remains consistent, which is we do want to see a diplomatic
00:42resolution to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
00:46We want to see one that allows the tens of thousands of Israelis who've been displaced
00:50from their homes and the tens of thousands of Lebanese who have been displaced from their
00:53homes to be able to return home.
00:56And that's what we are continuing to pursue.
00:58How concerned are you about escalation now after this attack?
01:03So again, I don't want to draw any specific conclusions about this incident yet or speculate
01:07about what might happen for them.
01:08I will say that, of course, since October 7th, we have seen any number of incidents
01:16that have led to the heightened risk of escalation.
01:19That has been a feature of the conflict across the blue line since October 7th.
01:26And so we are always concerned about escalation.
01:27We are always concerned about any type of event that may cause further escalation.
01:31And it remains our message to both Israel and to other parties that they need to do
01:38everything they can to try and reach a diplomatic resolution.
01:41That said, we go back to the fundamental, I know people get tired of hearing me say
01:44this, we go back to the fundamental issue we face here, which is very, very difficult
01:48to get a diplomatic resolution in the north absent a resolution to the conflict in Gaza
01:53absent a ceasefire in Gaza, which is why we continue to push for that ceasefire because
01:56we think it'll help make it much easier to reach a resolution.
02:00So how do you see this incident's impact, the Gaza ceasefire talks then?
02:06I think it's too early to say.
02:07Look, this is an incident that just occurred in the past few hours.
02:10We're continuing to gather information about it.
02:12I wouldn't want to make, I wouldn't want to speculate or make any predictions about what
02:15might happen.
02:16I will just say what we believe are legitimate targets and what are not legitimate targets.
02:20We believe that civilians are not legitimate targets for any type of operation and that
02:24no country should be targeting civilians.
02:26No country, no organization should be targeting civilians.
02:30Members of a terrorist organization are legitimate targets for countries to launch operations against.
02:36Those are the principles that we hold ourselves to and those are the principles we expect
02:41other countries to uphold in their operations.
02:43I don't want to speak to what the implications might be before a report is confirmed, but
02:47certainly, as is always the case, we would urge Iran not to take advantage of any incident,
02:53any instability, to try to add further instability and to further increase tensions in the region.
02:59That has been our message to Iran since October 7th.

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