An active duty member of the US Air Force set himself on fire on Sunday outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, to protest the war in the Gaza Strip.
Secret Service personnel extinguished the fire, with the man being sent to an area hospital due to “critical life-threatening injuries,” according to the DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.
In the video, which was broadcast on the live streaming platform Twitch and later deleted, the man reportedly stated that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide,” referring to Israel’s killings in Gaza since October. He also claimed:
I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest.
In December, another man set himself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, to protest Israel’s attack in Gaza.
Israel launched an offensive on Gaza after a cross-border attack by the Hamas group on 7 October, killing over 29,690 people. At the same time, some 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.
Israel is facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice. An interim order issued in January demanded that the country must stop acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.
