Staff Reporter.
The U.S. Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war has died, according to a U.S. official.
The airman was identified by police as 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell of San Antonio, Texas.
Dressed in military fatigues, Bushnell filmed himself yelling “Free Palestine” before collapsing to the ground.
In a livestream, Bushnell called the Israeli attack on Gaza “genocide” and said what he was doing was not as extreme as the suffering of the Palestinian people.
He then put his phone down, doused himself over the head with a liquid from a water bottle, and then set himself ablaze.
The District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department responded to a call about a person on fire outside the embassy just before 1 p.m. Sunday. But by the time firefighters arrived, the flames had been extinguished by members of the Secret Service.
Bushnell was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries where he later died, D.C. Fire and EMS said.
An Air Force spokesperson confirmed Bushnell was an active-duty Air Force officer.
Bushnell, according to his LinkedIn page, was also an “aspiring software engineer” who had worked for a San Antonio-based company called DevOps from March 2023 until this month.
The shocking act came as protests are increasing across the United States against Israel’s actions in Gaza, where it is waging a retaliatory war for an attack on October 7 by Hamas militants.
With the death toll in Gaza nearing 30,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there, international pressure has been increasing on the United States to rein its ally Israel in and call for a ceasefire.
Source:Fullview and News Agencies.