Jerusalem : Israeli airstrikes hit two refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing scores of people, health officials said. The strikes came as the US keeps urging Israel to take a humanitarian pause from its relentless bombardment of Gaza and rising civilian deaths.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Ramallah in the West Bank for a previously unannounced meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Blinken on Saturday met with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan, after holding talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insists there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released. President Joe Biden suggested that progress was being made on the humanitarian pause.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war reached 9,700, 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 United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.
Michael Hertzog, the Israeli ambassador to the US, says Gaza is the biggest terror complex in the world, with tens of thousands of fighters and rockets, among other weaponry and 310 miles (500 kilometers) of underground tunnels. This is what we're up against. And we have to uproot it, because if we do not, they will strike again and again, Hertzog told CBS' Face the Nation in an interview aired Sunday.
He also said Israel was making every effort to distinguish between terrorists and the civilian population in its war with the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza. This is a very complicated military operation in a densely populated area, and we're trying to move the population away from that war zone, he said.
Former President Barack Obama says nobody's hands are clean in the Israel-Hamas war and acknowledged that he's questioned in recent days whether his administration could have done more to push for a durable peace when he was in power.
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