By Adel Zaanoun with Joshua Melvin in Jerusalem

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES – US top diplomat Antony Blinken touched down Wednesday (20) in the Middle East to bolster international efforts to secure a truce in the Israel-Hamas war, as the threat of famine looms in besieged Gaza.

Global concern has mounted over the military conflict now in its sixth month, in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to a deadly attack by its fighters on October 7.

The latest flare-ups included an Israeli assault on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital complex, an area crowded with thousands of patients and people seeking refuge where Israel says Palestinian militants are holed up.

Overnight bombings and battles across the territory killed 90 people, said the health ministry in Gaza, which put the overall Palestinian death toll at close to 32,000.

AFPTV footage showed rescuers hunting through rubble amid a torrential rainstorm in Gaza city late on Tuesday (19).

Umm Abdullah Alwan, who lives in makeshift accommodation in the southern city of Rafah, told AFP her children “screamed in fear” when the storm hit because “we can’t tell the difference between the sound of rain and the sound of shelling”.

UN agencies have warned that Gaza’s 2.4 million people are on the brink of famine, and UN rights chief Volker Turk said Israel may be using “starvation as a method of war”.

The dire plight of Palestinians has pushed negotiators back to the table in Qatar to try to thrash out a temporary truce and a deal to free the remaining hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

– Hostage families protest –

The United States, long Israel’s top ally, has also ratcheted up its diplomatic efforts and increasingly voiced concern over humanitarian issues.

US Secretary of State Blinken, who touched down in regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia on Wednesday afternoon, has warned that Gaza’s “entire population” is suffering “severe levels of acute food insecurity”.

He will meet government leaders in Israel on Friday to discuss the release of hostages and humanitarian aid, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Blinken will discuss a planned Israeli assault on Rafah, Miller said, the last area in Gaza to remain free from a large-scale invasion.

The city is now home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, many of them sheltering in tents along the Egyptian border after fleeing from other parts of Gaza.

The US wants Israel to hold back from a full-scale ground assault but Netanyahu has said it is the only way to eradicate Hamas.

Israel has continued to bombard Rafah and on Wednesday said it had “eliminated senior Hamas operatives” in the city, publishing four names they said had controlled the group’s operations there.

On Thursday (21), Blinken is due to visit Egypt, the main entry point for aid deliveries to Gaza and a key mediator in truce efforts.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant will visit Washington in the coming week for talks with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, though neither side gave a date.

A US official said the two men would also discuss hostages, humanitarian aid and ways to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians sheltering in Rafah.

Netanyahu’s office said a separate delegation would visit Washington at “the request of US President Joe Biden” to discuss the planned Rafah assault.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7 resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.

Relatives and friends of the captives, who have consistently lobbied for action to get them freed, held several protests on Wednesday, including blocking a main road in Tel Aviv.

Israel’s military has waged a relentless offensive against Hamas that has killed at least 31,923 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

– ‘Step backwards’ –

Mediators have met for a third day in Qatar, where Hamas’s political leadership is based, in a renewed effort to secure a ceasefire — earlier attempts at agreeing a truce by the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last week failed.

Israel’s spy chief David Barnea kicked off the talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators on Monday (18), but there was little indication of an imminent agreement.

A source with knowledge of the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity because of their sensitivity, told AFP that “technical teams are still in Doha” and the “talks are ongoing”.

But a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, said the response Israel has given to the group’s latest proposal was “largely negative… and constitutes a step backwards”.

The plan being discussed would temporarily halt the fighting as hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of relief supplies is stepped up.

The war has meanwhile ground on unabated, with the Israeli military saying they had “killed approximately 90 terrorists” around Al-Shifa hospital during a days-long assault.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel of seeking to “sabotage ongoing negotiations in Doha”.

As the war has drawn greater global scrutiny, a Canadian official said the country would halt all arms shipments to Israel.

Canada exported $15.5 million of military material to Israel in 2022 but had already limited shipments to non-lethal equipment following the October 7 attack.

“The situation on the ground makes it so that we can’t” export any kind of military equipment, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on social media platform X that the decision “undermines Israel’s right to self-defence”.

-Agence France-Presse