Amnesty International has criticised an inconclusive US report on whether Israel’s operations in Gaza violate international law, calling the findings an “international version of ‘thoughts and prayers’”, Al Jazeera reports.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview for NBC News: “We don’t have double standards.

“We treat Israel, one of our closest allies and partners, just as we would treat any other country, including assessing something like international humanitarian law and its compliance with that law,” he said.

“[People] can see for themselves, everything we’ve laid out in the report. The report also makes clear that this is an incredibly complex military environment.”

Blinken added that making such an assessment during a conflict about individual incidents is “difficult”.

“You have an enemy that intentionally embeds itself with civilians, hiding under and within schools, mosques, apartment buildings, firing at Israeli forces from those places,” he said.