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. 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 United States is Israel's main ally and provides it with billions of dollars in military aid, but it has grown increasingly concerned over the mounting civilian death toll in the conflict.

Washington has said that Blinken will press Israel on its compliance with international humanitarian law and ask for "immediate measures" to boost aid to Gaza. The Hamas-run ministry of health said Monday eight people had been killed in an Israeli strike near Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. 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.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)