From Blinken’s latest phone call with Israeli officials to the number of displaced people from Rafah surpassing one million, these are the latest developments from the Israel-Hamas war this Monday.
Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people overnight into Monday, including a woman and three children, in central Gaza, Palestinian health officials said.
A strike on a home in the built-up Bureij refugee camp late Sunday killed four people, including three children. The second strike early Monday killed seven people, including a woman, in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said on Monday that the body of a man presumed to be a hostage was found in a community near the Gaza border that Hamas militants attacked on 7 October.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has pushed Israel and Hamas to agree on a new ceasefire and hostage deal, the latest in a line of attempts by Washington to stop the months-long hostilities in Gaza.
In a phone call to Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet member Benny Gantz, Blinken “emphasised that Hamas should take the deal without delay,” the State Department said in a pair of statements on Sunday.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden said that Israel had offered Hamas a three-phase deal, declaring it was time to end the fighting in Gaza and that the extremist group is “no longer capable” of carrying out another large-scale attack on Israel.
While Hamas stated it viewed the proposal “positively,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted since that Israel will continue to pursue the war until it has destroyed Hamas, despite growing pressure at home.
One million displaced from Rafah
The number of people displaced from the southern Gazan city of Rafah has surpassed one million people, the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) said in a statement posted on X.
Meanwhile, thousands of families were now looking for shelter in damaged and destroyed areas of Khan Younis, the agency added.
Israel is expanding its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, once the main hub of humanitarian aid operations.
The Israeli invasion has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians facing widespread hunger.
Israel faces growing international criticism over the huge cost in civilian lives and the widespread destruction caused by its nearly eight-month war with Hamas.
Israeli bombardments and ground operations in the besieged territory have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
