Blinken in ME as famine looms in Gaza
US top diplomat aims to secure truce as fighting rages in the besieged territory
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarked on a Middle East mission yesterday as strain showed in the relationship between President Joe Biden's administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In Gaza, where hopes were dashed for a ceasefire in the nearly six-month-old offensive in time for Ramadan last week, residents of Gaza City in the north described the most intense fighting for months around the Al Shifa hospital.
The international hunger monitor, relied on by the United Nations, warned this week of mass death from famine in Gaza without an immediate ceasefire.
More than 31,923 Palestinians have been killed and 74,096 have been injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement yesterday.
Blinken landed in Saudi Arabia yesterday and is due to travel to Egypt today to talk to regional leaders about efforts to secure a truce. In Saudi Arabia, he was expected to meet the ruling crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Blinken is scheduled to visit Israel tomorrow, his sixth visit since the offensive began.
Recent days have seen an intensification of fighting in northern parts of Gaza captured by Israeli forces early in the offensive, including Al Shifa, once Gaza's biggest hospital, now one of the few partially functioning in the north.
The Israeli prime minister on Tuesday rebuffed a plea from Biden to call off plans for a ground assault of Rafah, the city on the southern edge of Gaza sheltering more than half the enclave's 2.3 million people.
Netanyahu told lawmakers he had made it "supremely clear" to Biden in a phone call "that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there's no way to do that except by going in on the ground".
Israel says Rafah is the last major holdout of armed fighters from Hamas. Washington says a ground assault there would be a "mistake" and cause too much harm to civilians.
- Israeli troops kill 90 Palestinians in Al Shifa hospital
- Relations between Biden, Netanyahu under strain
- Death toll in enclave now 31,923