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07-02-2024
GAZA CITY: Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 107 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks across Gaza in last 24 hours.
US Secretary of State Blinken visits Egypt and Qatar to push for a deal between Israel and Hamas on a truce and the release of captives in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
“There is nothing left,” says the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, describing leveled infrastructure in northern Gaza.
UN truck carrying food supplies is hit by Israeli navy fire.
At least 27,585 people have been killed and 66,978 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
Israeli forces killed at least 14 Palestinians in airstrikes as they pressed their onslaught in Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis on Tuesday, while the top US diplomat pursued a quest to broker a ceasefire in the four-month-old war.
Israel said its forces had killed dozens of Palestinian gunmen throughout Gaza in the past 24 hours with fighting focused on Khan Younis in the south and a threatened assault looming on a nearby border town teeming with displaced people.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Egypt for talks after a stop in Saudi Arabia during his latest trouble-shooting Middle East swing that Palestinians hope will nail down a ceasefire before Israeli forces storm Gaza’s southern fringes where over a million of Gaza’s people are sheltering.
It was Blinken’s fifth trip to the region since Hamas militants’ lightning attack on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7 triggered the war, and his first visit since Washington brokered an offer, with Israeli input, for the first extended ceasefire of the conflict. Hamas says it is still weighing the proposal.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken and Saudi Arabia’s ruling crown prince discussed regional steps to achieve an enduring end to the war, tackling the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and limiting regional spillovers of the crisis.
Blinken departed Riyadh just after sunrise and arrived in Cairo where he began talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He is then due to fly on to Qatar and Israel.
Washington has for weeks sought an elusive deal to secure the release of remaining hostages among those Hamas kidnapped in its Oct. 7 assault, as key to making headway on broader challenges such as the governance of post-war Gaza.
The ceasefire offer, delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, awaits a reply from militants who say they want more guarantees it will stop Israel’s blitz on Gaza, against Israeli vows to keep fighting until Hamas is wiped out.
Washington also aims to prevent further escalation elsewhere in the Middle East, after days of US airstrikes on armed proxies of Iran, a major backer of Hamas, and further attacks on Red Sea shipping by Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthi militia. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
