An active-duty member of the US air force has died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest against “complicity in genocide”.#Nata

Identified as 25-year-old airman Aaron Bushnell of San Antonio, Texas was rushed to hospital where he later died last Sunday.

In a video posted online, Bushnell in a uniform could be heard shouting “Free Palestine” as he burned while identifying himself as an active air force member. He was reportedly on fire for about a minute before law enforcement officers put it out.

Bushnell walked up to the embassy and began livestreaming on Twitch, having set his phone down to record while he doused himself in a fluid and set it alight, saying at one point, he “will no longer be complicit in genocide”. The video was later removed from the streaming platform.

An air force spokesperson confirmed that Bushnell was an active member but gave no further details. A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy said no staff were injured and the man was “unknown” to them.

A Facebook post attributed to Bushnell circulated on Twitter on Monday, reading: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” The authenticity of the post could not be immediately verified.

The Israeli embassy has been the focus of protests by pro-Palestinian demonstrators calling for a ceasefire to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza, in which the death toll appears likely to pass 30,000 this week. The offensive follows cross-border attacks in Israel by Hamas on 7 October that killed about 1,200 people and in which more than 200 people were taken hostage.

Israeli strikes have killed 29,692 Palestinians in Gaza since October, two-thirds of them women and children, and injured 69,879, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health service.