U.S. seeks pauses in Gaza war as Israeli troops encircle city

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Friday to push for humanitarian pauses in the Gaza war after Israel said its troops had surrounded the Palestinian enclave’s biggest city, the focus of its drive to wipe out Hamas.

Israeli forces again pounded the Gaza Strip from ground, sea and air throughout the night amid global alarm over horrendous conditions inside the besieged territory and rising number of deaths of Palestinian civilians.

Allied militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters had detonated explosive devices against advancing troops, dropped grenades from drones, and fired mortars and anti-tank rockets in fierce urban warfare around destroyed buildings.

Blinken, on his second trip to Israel in a month, is due to discuss with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concrete steps to minimise harm to civilians in Gaza, where food, fuel, water and medicine are running out, buildings have been flattened, and thousands of people have fled homes to escape relentless bombings.

The White House said any pauses in fighting should be temporary and localised. It has dismissed calls from Arab and several other nations for a full ceasefire in the war, now in its 28th day.

“When I see a Palestinian child – a boy, a girl – pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child from Israel or anywhere else,” Blinken told reporters before leaving for Israel.

“So this is something that we have an obligation to respond to, and we will.”

Gaza health authorities say at least 9,061 people – many of them women and children – have been killed since Israel started its assault on the enclave of 2.3 million people in retaliation for deadly attacks by Hamas militants on southern Israel.

Israel says Hamas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 hostages in the attacks on Oct. 7, the deadliest day of its 75-year history.