GAZA STRIP: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Egypt on Tuesday (Feb 6) as a part of his newest Center East disaster tour, in search of a brand new ceasefire and “a permanent finish” to the Israel-Hamas war.
Heavy strikes and preventing in Gaza killed no less than 99 individuals in a single day, principally ladies and youngsters, mentioned the well being ministry within the Hamas-ruled territory that has been below nearly 4 months of bombardment.
Fears grew for greater than one million Palestinians crowded into the far southern Rafah space because the battlefront attracts ever nearer in Israel’s marketing campaign to eradicate Hamas over the Oct 7 assault.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned on Monday that the army “will attain locations the place we have now not but fought … proper as much as the final Hamas bastion, which is Rafah”, on the Egyptian border.
Blinken – on his fifth regional tour for the reason that bloodiest ever Gaza conflict broke out – was because of meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a day after he held talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.
The US prime envoy was later anticipated in Qatar after which Israel, hoping to shore up assist for a truce deal that was hashed out in Paris in January however has not but been signed off on by both Hamas or Israel.
Israeli troops, with air and naval assist, have been engaged in heavy city fight centred on Gaza’s essential southern metropolis of Khan Younis, the hometown of Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, a lot of which has been lowered to rubble.
Israel accuses Sinwar of masterminding the Oct 7 assault, which resulted within the deaths of about 1,160 individuals, principally civilians, in keeping with an AFP tally based mostly on official figures.
Militants additionally seized round 250 hostages. Israel says 132 stay in Gaza together with 28 who’re believed to have been killed.
Israel’s withering army marketing campaign has killed no less than 27,585 individuals in Gaza, principally ladies and youngsters, in keeping with the well being ministry.
“NO PLACE IS SAFE”
The military mentioned Tuesday that “over the previous day, dozens of terrorists have been killed and roughly 80 people suspected of involvement in terrorist exercise have been apprehended, together with a variety of terrorists that took half within the Oct 7 bloodbath”.
It added that military snipers had killed greater than 15 militants, and {that a} naval vessel had fired missiles at a “terrorist cell”.
An AFP journalist mentioned in a single day strikes rocked Khan Younis and that two air strikes additionally struck Rafah.
“No place is secure, no place in any respect – the place we could go?” one Palestinian, Mohamad Kozaat, mentioned after six members of his household, together with his daughter, had been wounded in an Israeli strike on the border city.
