US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Europe’s senior diplomat Josep Borrell began a new diplomatic push on Friday to stop spillover from the Gaza crisis into Israeli-occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Red Sea shipping lanes, according to Reuters.
Some 162 people were killed in the past 24 hours, Palestinian officials said earlier. In addition to these, Palestinian officials later said that in the south, where hundreds of thousands of Gazans have moved in response to Israeli warnings, at least 22 people were killed by Israeli strikes on Khan Younis.
Blinken is due to visit the West Bank during a week-long tour starting on Friday in Turkey, which has offered to mediate. He will also visit Israel, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
“It is in no one’s interest, not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s, for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, was due in Lebanon.
