Saudi Arabia 'making unremitting efforts' to reduce Gaza tensions: crown prince

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stressed in a phone call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that the kingdom is "making unremitting efforts" regionally and internationally to stop the intensification of the Israeli-Hamas war, the Saudi state news agency reported on Wednesday.

In a statement, the crown prince asserted the need to stop any Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, the agency said. Saudi Arabia firmly supported the Palestinian cause and attempts to achieve a comprehensive and just peace, it said.

Erdogan on Wednesday told bin Salman that Turkey had started work to get humanitarian aid to civilians affected by the war, the Turkish presidency said.

Turkey has offered to mediate the latest conflict, which began on Saturday when gunmen of the Palestinian militant group Hamas rampaged through Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and taking scores of hostages to Gaza.

Israel has retaliated with air strikes that have killed more than 1,100 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

Saturday's assault, the biggest incursion into Israel in decades, coincides with U.S.-backed moves to push Saudi Arabia towards normalising ties with Israel in return for a defence deal between Washington and Riyadh.

Gaza, a tiny coastal strip of land wedged between Israel in the north and east and Egypt to the southwest, is home to some 2.3 million people who have been living under a blockade since Hamas took control there in 2007.