WASHINGTON

US Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that she expressed concern about the situation in the Gaza Strip to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity," Harris told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Netanyahu.

The meeting came a day after Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the US Congress, where he claimed that the war in Gaza has "one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatant casualties in the history of urban warfare."

Harris said that what has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is "devastating."

"The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.

"We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent," she added.