Top US diplomat Antony Blinken was due in Israel on Monday for difficult talks on the war in Gaza as fears grow that the conflict could engulf the wider region, reports BSS.
Speaking in Qatar on Sunday, Blinken said that Palestinians displaced by the now four-month-old war must be allowed to "return home" while warning that the violence could "easily metastasize" into a regional conflict.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, violence has escalated in the occupied West Bank and on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, while Yemen's Huthi rebels have launched more than 100 drone and missile strikes towards targets in the Red Sea and Israel.
On his fourth tour of the region since the war began, the US secretary of state was scheduled to visit the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Monday before arriving in Israel, where he will hold talks with Israeli leaders on Tuesday.
The war in Gaza started with Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in about 1,140 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants, considered a "terrorist" group by the United States and European Union, also took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel. At least 24 of them are believed to have been killed.
Israel has responded with relentless bombardment and a ground invasion that have killed at least 22,835 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
At least 85 percent of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced by fighting, according to UN figures.
"I wake up thinking this is a passing nightmare, but it is a reality," said Gaza resident Nabil Fathi, 51.
"Our home and my son's home have been destroyed and we have 20 people martyred in our family. I don't know where we will go even if I survive."
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
