At least nine Americans have been killed in the latest conflict between Israel and the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas, the State Department said Oct. 9.
Appearing on CNN, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed the figure.
“We are in close contact with the government of Israel as they continue to conduct security operations to locate missing U.S. citizens, missing Israeli citizens,” he said. “And we are, of course, in close contact with the families of these nine deceased Americans and offering them any consular assistance that we can provide.”
Mr. Miller said “it’s very hard to say” how many U.S. citizens are missing in Israel as “it’s a number that moves all the time.”
“We’ve continued to work. Some of them will be located, we suspect,” he said. “Some of them may unfortunately turn out to be deceased, but we will work on that with the government of Israel in the coming days.”
Regarding how many Americans are being held hostage, Mr. Miller said, “We cannot confirm that at this point. There are reports of that. But there are Americans who are unaccounted for and our first priority is to locate those Americans.”
