the United States approves a new “emergency” sale of shells to Israel

The US government announced that it had approved “emergency” the sale to Israel of artillery ammunition for an amount of 147.5 million dollars, without going through Congress, Friday December 29. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded “the existence of an emergency requiring this immediate sale to the Israeli government”justified a press release from the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, a federal agency responsible in particular for American military sales to foreign states.

The sale concerns 155 mm shells and various military equipment taken from the stocks of the United States army, the press release specifies. On December 9, Washington also gave the green light to the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 tank shells used in its war against Hamas in Gaza, in retaliation for the attack carried out by Palestinian Hamas which killed around 1 140 dead on October 7. At least 21,507 people have been killed since October 7 by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, according to the latest report from the Hamas Ministry of Health – a report that franceinfo cannot confirm, due to lack of independent verification on site. .