US top diplomat Blinken to visit Israel as Gaza suffers bloodiest 24 hours of this year

Israeli attacks inflicted the highest daily Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war so far this year, health officials in Gaza said on Monday, as the US Secretary of State visited the region in a bid to prevent the conflict from expanding, Reuters reports.

Israeli forces bombarded the eastern part of the southern city of Khan Yunis and the central Gaza Strip amid ground clashes in those areas of the devastated enclave, residents said.

They said a strike in Deir Al-Balah had killed 18 people overnight and four on Monday. Health officials in the enclave said 247 people had been killed overnight.

Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters fired a missile barrage at the Israeli city of Tel Aviv in response to what it called the “Zionist massacres against civilians”.

And, in a further sign that the three-month-old war is spreading beyond the Palestinian enclave, Israel killed a top Hezbollah Commander in a strike in south Lebanon on Monday, sources familiar with the group’s operations said.

READ: Israel says to shift to ‘long’ third phase of Gaza war

US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who has backed Israel while expressing growing concern over civilian casualties, was holding talks on Gaza in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Monday to try to chart a way forward.

It is his fourth visit to the region since the deadly 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas in Gaza triggered a massive Israeli assault that shows no signs of ending.

Other groups have weighed in, attacking Israeli forces on the border with Lebanon and US troops in Iraq and Syria, as well as ships in the Red Sea.

Israel outlined a more focused approach to the war ahead of his visit as international concern grew over the high death toll.

The Israeli offensive has, so far, killed 23,084 Palestinians, health officials say, while Israel says Hamas still holds more than 100 hostages of the 240 seized during its attack on Israeli towns in which the militants killed 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

‘Nothing left’ 

In Gaza, on Monday, Jihad Baraka helped carry the shrouded bodies of Sami Bilal Abu Issa, 11, and Muhammed Bilal Abu Issa, 9, out of Gaza’s European Hospital into a waiting ambulance.

The boys suffered serious injuries when their home was hit as they slept and the Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital was unable to treat them, Baraka said.

The situation is dangerous at Al-Aqsa hospital. There is nothing left to treat the people with, no doctors are left, everyone evacuated

he said.

Israel accuses Hamas of operating among civilians. Hamas denies the accusation.

Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Monday that “indiscriminate aggression” and shelling could never bring peace or security.

In remarks at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, he said:

More children have died in Gaza than in all other conflicts around the world this past year. Of those who have survived, many have lost one or both parents, an entire generation of orphans

READ: UNICEF: world cannot remain silent as Gaza children are killed

The Israeli military said it had bombed an arms cache and uncovered a tunnel shaft in central Gaza and killed at least 10 militant fighters in Khan Yunis. It dropped leaflets on Al Moghani in central Gaza warning residents to evacuate several districts it said were “dangerous combat zones”. Hamas said a sniper had killed an Israeli soldier in central Gaza.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes at least once and many are now moving again, often sheltering in makeshift tents or huddled under tarpaulins.

For Aziza Abbas, 57, camped close to the southern border with Egypt, there was nowhere else to go after what she said was bombing around a school in which she had taken shelter after leaving her home in the north.

“They may kill us here, it doesn’t matter to them,” she told Reuters, saying she did not want to leave Gaza for Egypt, which has closed the border fearing an exodus.

In nearby Rafah, medics recovered the bodies of three people killed in an Israeli air strike on a car that locals said had been carrying food.

“Blinken … will never change anything,” displaced Palestinian, Mohammed Al-Qassas, said at the scene.

The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, reported 63 direct hits on its installations and Ashraf Al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza said 1.9 million people in shelters faced famine, drought and epidemics.

‘Rapid way out’ 

Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, visited Israel and urged it to protect Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank where Israeli forces have killed hundreds in a crackdown.

Blinken said he would tell Israeli officials they must do more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza. He also said it must allow Palestinian civilians to return home after right-wing members of Israel’s ruling coalition called for them to move elsewhere.

European Union Foreign Policy chief, Josep Borrell, joined Blinken in Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, told the Wall Street Journal his country was both determined to end Hamas rule of the enclave and deter other Iran-backed adversaries.

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