John Kirby likens Israeli airstrike to US bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan

White House spokesman John Kirby defended Israel amid international outrage after an airstrike reportedly killed dozens of civilians in the Gaza Strip — saying the US military “did the same thing.”

“We have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where, tragically, we caused civilian casualties,” he said — adding that the US responded the same way as Israel in the aftermath.

“We owned up to it, we investigated it, and we tried to learn from it to make changes,” Kirby said at Tuesday’s regular White House briefing.

US bombings that killed civilians included “as we pulled out of Afghanistan, where we conducted an airstrike which tragically killed a father and some of his kids,” he said.

“We atoned for it, we learned from it, and we put in place procedures to try to prevent that from happening again, and that’s what our expectations would be in this case.”

Kirby’s comments came after Israel reportedly killed over 40 displaced Palestinians on Sunday in an airstrike.

He said that two senior Hamas leaders had also been killed in the bombing.

“Hamas itself put out a statement celebrating the martyrdom of two of its fighters… So I don’t know how anybody could dispute that they weren’t trying to go after Hamas in a targeted, precise way in this regard,” he said.

“The Israelis have said they used 37-pound bombs, precision guided munitions. A 37-pound bomb is not a big bomb, and it is exactly the kind of munition…

“If, in fact, that’s what they used, it is certainly indicative of an effort to be discrete, targeted and precise,” he said.

“Now, obviously this had tragic results, and obviously that needs to be investigated, and we need to know why even using small-diameter, precision guided munitions this was able to happen, But we’ll have to let the Israelis get to the bottom of that.”