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GAZA STRIP: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due in Egypt on Tuesday (Feb 6) as a part of a Center East disaster tour in search of a brand new truce and “an everlasting finish” to the Israel-Hamas battle.
In Cairo, Blinken is scheduled to satisfy Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the day after he held talks in Riyadh with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The journey, Blinken’s fifth to the area for the reason that begin of the almost four-month-long battle, will later embrace stops in Israel and Qatar.
Blinken’s diplomatic push has been given recent urgency as Israeli forces press additional south in the direction of Rafah, a Palestinian metropolis on the southern border with Egypt the place greater than half the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip has taken shelter.
Shellings and raids continued Tuesday morning as Israel presses to eradicate Hamas within the wake of the militants’ unprecedented Oct 7 assault.
“No place is protected, no place in any respect, the place lets go?” Palestinian Mohamad Kozaat stated after six members of his household, together with his daughter, had been injured in an Israeli strike on the border city.
At the least 99 individuals, principally ladies and kids, had been killed in Israeli strikes in a single day Monday to Tuesday, in accordance with the well being ministry within the Hamas-ruled territory.
Blinken is hoping to shore up help for a truce deal hashed out in Paris in January, however not yet signed off on by either Hamas or Israel.
He spoke with the Saudi crown prince about “the pressing want to cut back regional tensions”, in accordance with State Division spokesman Matthew Miller.
A surge in assaults throughout the area by Iran-backed Hamas allies has triggered counterattacks by the US and its companions.
Additionally they mentioned “regional coordination to attain an everlasting finish to the disaster in Gaza”.
However Israel has vowed to press on with its retaliatory offensive, pushing as far into the Palestinian territory as wanted to root out high-ranking Hamas officers.
The army “will attain locations the place we have now not but fought … proper as much as the final Hamas bastion, which is Rafah,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant stated Monday.
HOSTAGE NEGOTIATIONS
In latest weeks, the Israeli army has pounded Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s foremost metropolis and the hometown of Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar.
Gallant stated Sinwar was “transferring from hideout to hideout”, with out elaborating on his presumed present location.
Israel accuses Sinwar of masterminding the Oct 7 assault, which resulted within the deaths of about 1,160 individuals, principally civilians, in accordance with an AFP tally based mostly on official figures.
Militants additionally seized round 250 hostages. Israel says 132 stay in Gaza – together with 28 believed to have been killed, in accordance with up to date figures from the prime minister’s workplace.
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