Jerusalem : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected US calls for a humanitarian pause in the Israel-Hamas war, telling US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday we are going full steam ahead, unless the hostages held by Hamas are released.
Blinken is on his third visit to Israel since the war erupted last month and is set to meet with leaders in Jordan on Saturday. Amid fears that the conflict will regionalise, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, said in a public speech that his group was undeterred by US warnings to stay out of the war. However, he stopped short of saying Hezbollah would engage fully in the war.
Israeli troops also further closed in on Gaza City, launching targeted attacks within the city on militant cells on Friday. The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 9,227, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 140 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the Oct 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting, and 242 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group. Roughly 1,100 people have left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing since Wednesday under an apparent agreement among the US, Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.
A couple hundred people calling for a cease-fire as Israel continues its bombardment of the Gaza Strip blocked entrances to a federal building in downtown Seattle Friday where US Sen. Patty Murray has an office. Protesters, many wearing black sweatshirts that said Cease Fire Now, sang songs about freedom and chanted while one person climbed a ladder and hung a banner on the building that said: Murray: Ceasefire Now!
Participants linked arms, blocking the building's entrances for several hours despite attempts by federal and other law enforcement officers to shove them away. Advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace organized the demonstration, one of several similar events that have happened across the United States in recent days.
Murray, who is president pro tempore of the Senate, on Thursday called for a humanitarian pause in the war to allow critical humanitarian aid to reach innocent civilians in Gaza. She also reiterated Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism. Israeli authorities informed France that the French Institute of Gaza was targeted in an Israeli strike, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
No one working at the institute, nor any French national, was inside the institute, the statement said. We asked Israeli authorities to communicate to us without delay by appropriate (channels) the tangible elements that motivated this decision, the ministry said.
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