US Embassy employee dead in Jerusalem

State Department officials in Israel have discovered the "death of a direct-hire employee,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team confirmed.

“There's not much more I can say at this point due to privacy considerations,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Monday. “There are steps we need to undertake, including next-of-kin notification, whenever such a terrible tragedy occurs.”

Miller emphasized that “there are no indications of foul play.” The dead employee was an American citizen, but Miller avoided revealing the person’s role or any other details of the case.

“It's an incident that is under investigation, and I do just want to be clear. That's a step that always happens when someone dies,” he said. “I'm sure [that] when we’ve finished next-of-kin notifications, I'll be able to say more, but that's not where we are today.”

U.S. Embassy officials noted earlier on Monday that the person in question is not Ambassador Jack Lew. The death will be a blow to an embassy team already seized with one of the most intense crises on the U.S. diplomatic horizon — the war between Israel and Hamas. The news of the death comes just days after a disaster at an aid delivery point in northern Gaza in which more than 110 people were killed and hundreds more injured. Israeli officials claim that the civilians died as a result of a stampede for the aid, which forced the Israeli troops to fire warning shots, but Hamas claims that the troops engaged in "direct firing at citizens,” as the BBC noted.

“As last week's incident in northern Gaza made painfully clear, people are desperate for water, for medicine. ... The situation is simply intolerable,” Miller said. “We do not have any independent confirmation of how the actual events rolled out. I know that there are different assessments and conflicting evidence about what happened, which is why we're going to wait [for] the outcome of the investigation."

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President Joe Biden’s administration has backed Israeli efforts to target Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist rampage that ignited the war, but the U.S. officials have signaled their frustration over the civilian casualties in the conflict and other humanitarian consequences of the war, even as they attempt to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release scores of hostages seized on Oct. 7.

“Our goal is clear to establish a comprehensive aid strategy that includes air, land, and sea routes to maximize the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and ensure that aid is distributed to everyone in Gaza who needs it,” Miller said. “Finally, we continue to push for a temporary ceasefire through a hostage agreement that would allow a massive surge of aid into Gaza and ease the distribution problems that are currently hindering humanitarian efforts.”