Qatar Denies White House Claim Trump Sent Warning Before Israel’s Attack
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - The administration of US President Donald Trump has said it notified Qatari officials before Israel’s attack on Hamas negotiators in Doha, a claim refuted by the Persian Gulf country.
The statement from the White House on Tuesday came hours after the strike on a residential area in Qatar’s capital, Doha. Qatar has been a lead mediator in US-backed ceasefire talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
“The Trump administration was notified by the United States military that Israel was attacking Hamas, which, very unfortunately, was located in a section of Doha, the capital of Qatar,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” she said.
Leavitt added that Trump had directed his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to “inform the Qataris of the impending attack”.
However, Qatar refuted the characterization, with a spokesperson for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying claims that the government had been “pre-informed of the attack are completely false”.
“The call that was received from an American official came during the sound of the explosions that resulted from the Israeli attack in Doha,” Majed al-Ansari wrote in a statement on X, Al Jazeera reported.
Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the call from the US came ten minutes after the attack began, describing the incident as “state terrorism”.
The Zionist regime struck Doha on Tuesday in missile attacks that it said were aimed at senior leaders of Hamas, including negotiators from the Palestinian group who have been engaged in talks on securing a ceasefire in Gaza.
Qatar condemned the attack as a violation of international law and of its sovereignty, with multiple countries and blocs also lashing out at the Israeli regime.
The attack came at a time when Qatar, one of the lead mediators between Israel and the United States, on the one hand, and Hamas on the other, had been trying to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 64,600 people since October 2023, when it launched a war on the Palestinian enclave.
The attack took place in the West Bay Lagoon area in Doha, home to many foreign embassies, schools, supermarkets and residential compounds. The region is home to Qataris as well as residents from around the world.
A Hamas official told Al Jazeera Arabic that the attack targeted Hamas ceasefire negotiators. The attack came as negotiators from Hamas were meeting to consider the latest ceasefire proposal put forth by the US.
But Suhail al-Hindi, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, also confirmed that the group’s leadership, which was targeted in Doha, had survived the attack.
Among those believed to have been targeted were senior leaders Khalil al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal.
But the attack killed al-Hayya’s son, Humam, and one of his top aides, al-Hindi told Al Jazeera. Contact had also been lost with three other bodyguards, he added.
He stressed that the loss of any lives was tragic.
“The blood of the leadership of the movement is like the blood of any Palestinian child,” al-Hindi said.
In addition to al-Hayya’s son Humam and an aide, Qatar confirmed late in the evening that at least one Qatari security official had died in the attack. Other members of Qatar’s security forces were wounded, the country’s Interior Ministry said.
Hamas said six people had been killed in all.
The strikes on Doha violate the United Nations Charter — breaching Qatar’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
