The purpose of US Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to Israel has been announced

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Israel on Friday and was expected to call for localized pauses in fighting to allow aid to flow into Gaza. For its part, The Guardian notes, the Israeli military said it had surrounded the largest city in the Palestinian enclave and was moving further into the center, engaging in close combat with the enemy.

Leaving Washington, Blinken said he would discuss concrete steps to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza during talks with Benjamin Netanyahu. It is his second meeting with Israel’s prime minister since the war began nearly a month ago, when Hamas militants killed 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 hostages.

Since then, Israeli retaliatory strikes on Gaza have killed at least 9,061 people, including 3,760 children, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said Thursday, citing warnings from independent United Nations experts that Palestinians in the territory are being subjected to “ serious risk of genocide.”

“We call on Israel and its allies to agree to an immediate ceasefire. We are running out of time,” the group of UN special rapporteurs said in a statement.

Following Joe Biden’s announcement of support for a pause in hostilities to allow time for the release of hostages, US national security spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday that the White House was exploring the idea of ​​”pausing as long as may be necessary to continue the delivery of aid and continue the work of safe removal.” people, including hostages.”

The White House has said any pause in fighting should be temporary and localized, and insists it will not prevent Israel from defending itself.

Blinken is due to meet Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Amman on Saturday. In a statement, Safadi said Israel must end the war in Gaza, where he said it was committing war crimes by bombing civilians and imposing siege.

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah will give a highly anticipated speech on Friday afternoon. The head of a powerful Iran-backed Shiite militant group will break a week-long silence with a speech from Beirut that comes amid rising violence on Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah said Thursday it simultaneously attacked 19 positions in Israel on Thursday night. Clashes so far have been largely confined to the border, with Hezbollah using only a fraction of the firepower that Nasrallah has threatened Israel with for years.

Since October 7, some 50 Hezbollah fighters are estimated to have been killed in firefights in which it attempted to fire anti-tank missiles at Israeli positions.

US national security spokesman Kirby said of Nasrallah’s speech: “I don’t think we’ve seen any concrete signs yet that Hezbollah is ready to go full force. So we’ll see what he says.”

In Gaza, mounting Palestinian civilian casualties along with severe shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel have intensified calls from world leaders for a pause in fighting or a ceasefire.

Israel has rejected the calls, saying its actions target Hamas militants, whom it accuses of deliberately hiding among the population and civilian buildings. The White House also rejected calls for a ceasefire. After news of the encirclement of Gaza City broke on Thursday, Netanyahu said in a statement: “We are in the midst of a battle. We made impressive progress and passed the outskirts of Gaza City. We are moving forward.”

Israel said it had lost 18 soldiers and killed dozens of militants since ground operations expanded on Friday.

The Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt was due to open on Friday to limited evacuations as part of a deal brokered by Qatar aimed at allowing some foreign passport holders, their dependents and some injured Gazans to leave the enclave.

According to border guards, over the previous two days, more than 700 foreign citizens left for Egypt through Rafah. Dozens of seriously wounded Palestinians also had to cross the border. Israel turned to foreign countries with a request to send hospital ships for them.

More than a third of Gaza’s 35 hospitals are not functioning, many of them turned into makeshift refugee camps.

“The situation is beyond catastrophic,” said the charity Palestinian Medical Aid, describing crowded hallways and many medics who were themselves bereaved and homeless.

Israel said late Thursday that it would “sever all contacts with Gaza,” sending back all Palestinian workers who came from the enclave. “Those workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day the war began will be returned to Gaza,” the Israeli security cabinet said, without specifying how many people would be sent back.

Before the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israel issued work permits to 18,500 people from Gaza, according to Cogat, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs.