Middle East crisis: Israel says it has an evacuation plan for combat areas in Gaza
A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington on Sunday afternoon, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. A U.S. Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, confirmed Sunday evening that the man was an active-duty airman.
U.S. Secret Service officers extinguished the fire outside the embassy, in northwest Washington, around 1 p.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman for the city’s fire department. The man was taken to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries and remains in critical condition.
No embassy staff were injured, and according to Tal Naim, an embassy spokeswoman, all were responsible.
The man appeared to have filmed the protest and streamed it live on the social media platform Twitch at the time police said they responded to the incident. The New York Times could not confirm who was behind the account that posted the video, but the video showed a man walking toward the Israeli embassy in Washington.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” one man said in the video, echoing the language opponents of Israel’s military action in Gaza have used to describe the campaign. “I am about to take an extreme protest action.”
Standing in front of the embassy gate, he put down his phone to film while immersing himself in a clear liquid from a metal bottle. He then set himself on fire while shouting “Free Palestine!” called out. until he fell to the ground.
The video showed law enforcement officers approaching him shortly before the fire broke out. Someone could be heard off camera saying, “Can I help you, sir?” The officers then spent more than a minute extinguishing the flames.
The video was removed Sunday afternoon and replaced with a message stating that the channel violated Twitch guidelines. It was the only video posted to the account that had a Palestinian flag as the header image.
In the video, the man was dressed in a uniform and the name he used matched a LinkedIn profile for an active-duty Air Force officer in Texas. Authorities have not confirmed the man’s identity.
Police also examined a suspicious vehicle nearby for explosives, but Sean Hickman, a police spokesman, said the crash scene was cleared by 4 p.m. Secret Service agents and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had worked with Washington’s explosives. recovery unit to investigate the incident.
Protests against Israel have become an almost daily occurrence across the country since Israel began its campaign in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that killed at least 1,200 people, Israeli officials said. International calls for a humanitarian ceasefire have increased in recent months as the humanitarian crisis deepens. The embassy has been the scene of ongoing protests against the war in Gaza, as the death toll among civilians in the devastated enclave continues to rise, with more than 29,000 dead, local health ministry officials said.
Protests have sometimes led to arrests, but rarely to violence. In December, a demonstrator set himself on fire in front of the door Israeli Consulate in Atlanta in what police said was “likely an extreme act of political protest.”