(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Top US diplomat Antony Blinken met Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia Mohamed bin Salman Monday in a visit that Palestinians hope will deliver a truce before a27,478 Gazans massacred
The health ministry in Gaza said Monday at least 27,478 people have been killed in the territory in nearly four months of war. A ministry statement said 66,835 people have been wounded since fighting erupted on October 7.
threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, the border city where about half of the Gaza population is sheltering.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Riyadh at the start of his first Middle East trip since Washington brokered an offer, with Israeli input, for the first extended ceasefire of the war.
Blinken's meeting with Prince Mohamed bin Salman lasted about two hours and the secretary did not answer reporters' questions as he returned to his hotel.
The offer, delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, awaits a reply from Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, who say they want more guarantees it will bring an end to the four-month-old war in the Gaza Strip.
Beyond the truce itself, Blinken aims to win backing for US plans for what would follow: rebuilding and running Gaza, and ultimately for a Palestinian state - which Israel now rejects - and for Arab countries to normalise ties with Israel.
Washington also seeks to prevent further escalation elsewhere in the Middle East, after days of US air strikes against pro-Iranian armed groups across the region.
Israel has pressed on with its offensive and threatened a new ground assault on Rafah, a small city on the southern border with Egypt where over half of Gaza's 2.3mn people are now living, mostly in makeshift tents.
The ceasefire proposal, as described by sources close to the talks, would see a truce of at least 40 days when militants would free civilians among remaining hostages they are holding, followed by later phases to hand over soldiers and dead bodies.
In one of the war's biggest battles, Israeli tanks have been advancing for two weeks in Khan Younis, the main southern city, which was already housing hundreds of thousands of people who fled other areas. Fighting has also resurged in Gaza City in the north of the Strip, in areas Israel said it subdued in the war's first two months.
Gaza authorities say more than 27,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Israel's assault, with thousands more feared unrecovered in the rubble. Israel says 226 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza.
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