US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s final press conference was interrupted on Thursday by two journalists who blasted him over the US’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza before they were forcibly removed from the State Department’s press briefing room.

The journalists repeatedly interrupted Blinken within the first 15 minutes of his hour-long press conference. The outgoing Secretary of State asked both men to hold their questions until later, but they persisted until security guards came to take them away.

“Why did you keep the bombs flowing?” Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone, an online news site, shouted at Blinken from the back of the press room. “Why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism?”

Asked by one reporter if he had any regrets about not enforcing red lines on Israel, Blinken said the Biden administration’s policies “were basically supported by an overwhelming majority of Israelis after the trauma of October 7”.