The Albany Gazette - Blinken tours Middle East as Gaza war rages into fourth month

US Secretary of State Blinken, speaking in Qatar on the latest leg of his fourth Middle East tour since the start of the war, also said Palestinians displaced by the fighting must be allowed to "return home".

In the besieged Hamas-run Gaza Strip, the health ministry reported at least 113 deaths over 24 hours of Israeli bombardment.

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera network said two journalists working for it were killed when their car was struck in Rafah, in southern Gaza.

They were named as Mustafa Thuria, a video stringer who also worked for AFP and other media organisations, and Hamza Wael Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief who had earlier lost his wife and two other children in an Israeli strike.

Al Jazeera said it condemned the killings and the "targeting" of journalists, while Blinken called the deaths an "unimaginable tragedy".

"And that's also been the case for... far too many innocent Palestinian men, women and children," Blinken said.

AFP correspondents reported air strikes in Khan Yunis, the territory's main southern city, and Rafah near the Egyptian border, where many displaced people have sought refuge.

The war, triggered by deadly Hamas attacks on Israel in early October, has displaced at least 85 percent of Gaza's 2.4 million people, according to UN figures.

"Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow," Blinken said. "They cannot, they must not be pressed to leave Gaza."

Some Israeli ministers have recently spoke in favour of "encouraging" Gazans to leave and re-establishing Jewish settlements in the territory, although this is not official Israeli policy.

The Israeli army -- which claims to have "dismantled" Hamas's military leadership in northern Gaza -- reported killing more "terrorists" in central Gaza, including in a drone strike in the Bureij refugee camp.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that "what happened on October 7 will not happen again".

"This is the commitment of my government and this is the reason why our soldiers in the field are giving their lives. We must continue until total victory," he said.

- 'Not a nightmare, reality' -

The war started with Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in about 1,140 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The militants, considered a "terrorist" group by the United States and European Union, also took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel. At least 24 of them are believed to have been killed.

Israel has responded with relentless bombardment and ground invasion that have killed at least 22,835 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

"These three months have been like a quarter of a century," said one Gaza resident, Nabil Fathi, 51. "I wake up thinking this is a passing nightmare, but it is a reality.

"Our home and my son's home have been destroyed and we have 20 people martyred in our family. I don't know where we will go even if I survive."

As war raged in Gaza, violence has also flared in the occupied West Bank and on Israel's northern border, which has seen near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.

Many civilians living on either side of the border have evacuated.

Hezbollah on Saturday said it had fired 62 rockets at an Israeli military base, days after it blamed Israel for a strike in Beirut that killed Hamas's deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri.

The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah "military sites" in response, while army spokesman Daniel Hagari warned the Hamas ally against "dragging Lebanon into an unnecessary war".

Netanyahu said Israel was "determined to defend our citizens and to return the residents of the north safely to their homes... If we can, we will do so diplomatically, and if not, we will work in other ways."

At Lebanon's main airport in Beirut, cyberattackers used the departure and arrivals screens to display an anti-Hezbollah message, according to media reports.

"Hassan Nasrallah, no one will support you if you drag the country into war," said the message, addressing Hezbollah's leader. A hardline Christian group whose emblem appeared onscreen has denied involvement.

- Soaring West Bank violence -

Blinken, on a whirlwind tour of the Middle East, warned of a "moment of profound tension in the region".

"This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering," he said.

Earlier on Sunday Blinken had talks in Jordan with King Abdullah II, who according to a royal statement warned of the Israel-Hamas war's "catastrophic repercussions" and of the need to end "the tragic humanitarian crisis" in Gaza.

In the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, deadly violence has surged in recent months to levels unseen in nearly two decades.

An Israeli strike on Sunday killed seven Palestinians in the northern city of Jenin, the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry said, also reporting an eighth fatality by Israeli fire in a separate incident.

Later, Israeli police said that officers responding to a car-ramming attack at a West Bank checkpoint shot a Palestinian girl, with medics confirming the three-year-old child's death.

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(R.White--TAG)