Ambulances line up to enter the Egyptian gate of the Rafah crossing on the way to the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Egypt, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

File picture of U.S. President Donald Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the West Wing of the White House
| Photo Credit: AP

Emergency services personnel work near a damaged site after a projectile fired from Yemen was intercepted, in Ramat Gan, Israel December 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Israel said on Thursday (December 19, 2024) that it struck ports and energy infrastructure used by Houthi rebels in Yemen after intercepting a missile fired from the country, warning Houthi leaders it “will reach you too.”

Houthi media said the strikes hit power stations, oil facilities and the port of Hodaidah, causing deaths and injuries, without giving further details.

Also read: Suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targets ship in the Red Sea

The strikes came after the interception of a missile fired by Houthi rebels towards Israel. The group has regularly targeted Israel over its military operation in Gaza.

Israel’s military said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen — including ports and energy infrastructure in Sanaa, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions.”

“I warn the leaders of the Houthi terrorist organisation: Israel’s long arm will reach you too,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said.

Al-Masira, a media channel belonging to the Houthis, said a series of “aggressive raids” were launched in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Hodeidah.

It reported raids that “targeted two central power plants” in and around Yemen’s capital Sanaa, while in Hodeidah it said “the enemy launched four aggressive raids targeting the port… and two raids targeting” an oil facility.

It said there were casualties at the oil facility without giving further details.

The strikes came after Israel’s military intercepted a missile from Yemen for the second time this week.

On Monday, the Houthis claimed a missile launch they said was aimed at “a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied area of Yaffa” — a reference to Israel’s Tel Aviv area.

Also Monday (December 16, 2024), an Israeli navy missile boat intercepted a drone in the Mediterranean after it was launched from Yemen, the military said.

Will attack Israel till Gaza aggression stops: Houthis

The Houthi rebels have said they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians and pledged Monday to continue operations “until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted”.

On December 9, a drone claimed by Houthis exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israel city of Yavne, causing no casualties.

In July, a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

The Houthis have also regularly targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, leading to retaliatory strikes on Huthi targets by United States and sometimes British forces.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the group had become a “global threat,” pointing to Iran’s support for the rebels.

“We will continue to act against anyone, anyone in the Middle East, that threatens the state of Israel,” he said.

File picture of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has warned Hamas to release Israeli hostages before he takes office in January 2025
| Photo Credit: via Reuters

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is demanding the immediate release of Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, saying that if they are not freed before he is sworn into office for a second term there will be “hell to pay”.

“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social site.

He added that, “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump was threatening to directly involve the U.S. military in Israel’s ongoing campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Mr. Trump’s allies have said he hopes there will be a ceasefire and hostage release deal before he returns to office early next year.

ALSO READ: A West Asia under Donald Trump

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined comment. But the country’s president, Isaac Herzog, welcomed Mr. Trump’s comments in a social media post.

“Thank you and bless you Mr. President-elect @realDonaldTrump,” he wrote on X. “We all pray for the moment we see our sisters and brothers back home!”

Death of U.S.-Israeli citizen

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage on October 7, 2023. Some 100 are still held inside Gaza, around two-thirds believed to be alive.

Mr. Trump’s threat came hours after the Israeli government confirmed the death of Omer Neutra, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, whose body is still believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza, according to the Israeli government.

Days earlier, Hamas released a hostage video of Edan Alexander, who was serving in the Israeli military when he was taken by Hamas to Gaza. Filmed under apparent duress, Mr. Alexander calls on Mr. Trump to work to negotiate for his freedom and that of the remaining Hamas hostages.

The Biden administration is mounting a last-ditch effort to try to restart talks between Israel and Hamas now that it has brokered a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But the administration has said that Hamas has yet to show a willingness to reengage in negotiations and that the group isn’t concerned for its own lives or the lives of Gaza civilians.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive for the attack has left at least 44,429 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The war has destroyed vast areas of the coastal enclave and displaced 90% of its population of 2.3 million people — often multiple times.

Smoke rises after a recent Israeli airstrike on Southern Lebanon. File
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

The Israeli military said on Monday (November 4, 2024) it had killed a top Hezbollah commander it accused of overseeing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

“Abu Ali Rida, the Hezbollah commander of the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon, was “eliminated” in an air strike,” the military said, without specifying when he was killed.

Rida “was responsible for planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on IDF (military) troops and oversaw the terrorist activities of Hezbollah operatives in the area”, the military said in a statement.

Israel has continued to pound Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since the war between the two sides broke out in late September.

In recent weeks, Israel has killed several of the movement’s militant commanders and top leaders, including former chief Hassan Nasrallah.

The war began after nearly a year of cross-border skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, with the Lebanese group firing rockets into northern Israel almost daily in support of its ally in Gaza, Hamas.

Israel is fighting its deadliest war in Gaza against Hamas after the Palestinian militant group launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year.

Flames and smoke rise form an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
| Photo Credit: BILAL HUSSEIN

A child and three adults were killed and 24 others were wounded on Monday (October 21, 2024) in an Israeli strike near the Lebanese capital Beirut’s main government hospital, the national health ministry said in a statement.

Israel’s campaign in Lebanon has displaced more than 1.2 million people multiple times, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel says it aims to drive Hezbollah fighters from the border region so tens of thousands of Israelis can return to homes they were forced to flee over the past year due to Hezbollah cross-border fire in solidarity with Palestinians during the war in Gaza.

More strikes are coming

Israel said late Monday (October 21, 2024) it planned to carry out more strikes in Lebanon against a Hezbollah-run financial institution that it targeted the night before and which it says uses customers’ deposits to finance attacks against Israel.

At least 15 branches of Al-Qard Al-Hasan were hit late Sunday (October 20, 2024) in the southern neighbourhoods of Beirut, across southern Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. One strike flattened a nine-story building in Beirut with a branch inside it.

The Israeli military issued evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes, and there were no reports of casualties.

Associated Press journalists witnessed strikes late Monday (October 21, 2024) in the coastal region of Ouzai, near Beirut’s airport, and Lebanon’s Health Ministry said an airstrike near Beirut’s largest public hospital killed four, including a child, and wounded 24. It was the first strike on the Lebanese capital in 10 days.

Palestinians look at the damage at the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Gaza City on August 10, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school compound housing displaced families killed around 100 people, the Hamas-run Gaza government said on Saturday (August 10, 2024), an attack the Israeli military said targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants operating there.

Video from the site showed body parts scattered on the ground and more bodies being carried away and covered in blankets on the floor. Empty food tins lay in a puddle of blood and burnt mattresses and a child’s doll among the debris.

The Hamas-run media office said in a statement that the strikes hit when people sheltering at the school were performing dawn prayers, leading to many casualties.

“So far, there are more than 93 martyrs, including 11 children and six women. There are unidentified remains,” said spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence, Mahmoud Bassal, in a televised news conference.

Around 6,000 people had been sheltering at the compound, he said. The Gaza Health Ministry has so far not provided casualty details.

In a statement in Hebrew the Israeli military said the death toll was inflated. It said around 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating at the site.

“The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility,” Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on X.

“According to an initial review, the numbers published by the Hamas-run Government Information Office in Gaza, do not align with the information held by the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike,” Mr. Shoshani said.

Israel says Palestinian militant groups embed among Gaza’s civilians, operating from within schools, hospitals and designated humanitarian zones – which Hamas and its allies deny.

Follow the latest updates from the war in Gaza

Hamas said the strike was a horrific crime and a serious escalation. Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’ political office, said in a statement that the dead did not include a “single combatant.”

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought shelter in Gaza’s schools, most of which have stopped functioning since the start of the war 10 months ago.

A spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabih Abu Rudeineh, urged Israel’s ally Washington to put an end to the “blind support that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly.”

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the strike, which came as mediators were pushing to resume ceasefire talks, and said that the killing of Gaza civilians showed Israel had no intention to end the war.

Egypt, the United States and Qatar have scheduled a new round of ceasefire negotiations for Thursday (August 15, 2024), as fears are growing of a broader conflict, involving Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said he will not end the war until Hamas no longer poses a threat to Israelis, said a delegation would be sent to the August 15 talks.

A Hamas official told Reuters the group was studying the new offer for talks but did not elaborate.

Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Health officials say most the fatalities have been civilian. Israel, which has lost 329 soldiers in Gaza, says at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities are fighters. Iran-backed Hamas does not publish its casualties.

Hamas on Friday said it “considers positively” an Israeli roadmap towards a full Gaza ceasefire announced by U.S. President Joe Biden, who urged an end to the almost eight-month war.

But swiftly afterwards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu poured cold water on Mr. Biden’s talk of peace, insisting the army would continue fighting until it had “eliminated” Hamas’s capacity to rule Gaza and pose a military threat.

Mr. Biden’s intervention, which had been heavily trailed, came as Israeli troops pushed into central Rafah, escalating the war with Hamas despite international objections to any assault on the southern Gaza city.

In his first major address outlining how the Gaza war might end, Mr. Biden said Israel’s three-stage offer would begin with a six-week phase that would see Israeli forces withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza.

It would also see the “release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly, the wounded, in exchange for (the) release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners”.

Israel and the Palestinians would then negotiate during those six weeks for a lasting ceasefire — but the truce would continue while the talks remained underway, Mr. Biden said.

The U.S. president urged Hamas to accept the Israeli offer. “It’s time for this war to end, for the day after to begin,” he said, in comments echoed by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

Hamas in a statement on Friday evening said it “considers positively” Mr. Biden’s speech regarding “a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, reconstruction and the exchange of prisoners”.

UN chief Antonio Guterres “strongly hopes” the latest development “will lead to an agreement by the parties for lasting peace”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the The Israeli offer “provides a glimpse of hope and a possible path out of the war’s deadlock”.

Israel insists on war aims

But Netanyahu took issue with Mr. Biden’s presentation of what was on the table, insisting the transition from one stage to the next in the proposed roadmap was “conditional” and crafted to allow Israel to maintain its war aims.

“The prime minister authorised the negotiating team to present an outline for achieving (the return of hostages), while insisting that the war will not end until all of its goals are achieved,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Those aims include “the return of all our hostages and the elimination of Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities”, it added.

“The exact outline proposed by Israel, including the conditional transition from stage to stage, allows Israel to maintain these principles.”

Hamas has been careful about commenting on ceasefire proposals put to it by Egyptian, Qatari or US mediators. It accepted one earlier this year only for it to be disavowed by Israel.

Earlier on Friday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel of “using negotiations as a cover to continue its aggression”, saying Hamas “refuses to be a part of these manoeuvres”.

Israel has repeatedly vowed to destroy Hamas since the Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israel on October 7.

Israel sent tanks and troops into Rafah in early May, ignoring concerns over the safety of displaced Palestinian civilians sheltering in the city on the Egyptian border.

On Friday, soldiers were operating in the city centre where they uncovered rocket launchers and tunnel shafts and dismantled a Hamas weapons storage facility, the army said.

Blinken says aid situation ‘dire’

A stream of civilians has flooded out of Rafah, taking their belongings on their shoulders, in cars or on donkey-drawn carts.

Before the Rafah offensive began, the United Nations said up to 1.4 million people were sheltering in the city.

Since then, one million have fled the area, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said.

The Israeli seizure of the Rafah crossing has further slowed sporadic deliveries of aid for Gaza’s 2.4 million people and effectively shuttered the territory’s main exit point.

Israel said at the weekend that aid deliveries had been stepped up.

But US Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged on Friday that the humanitarian situation was “dire” despite US efforts to bring in more assistance.

The World Food Programme said daily life had become “apocalyptic” in parts of southern Gaza since Israel began its assault on Rafah in early May.

Jordan announced it will host a summit on June 11, jointly organised with Egypt and the United Nations, bringing together aid agency chiefs and heads of donor governments to discuss the humanitarian response.

‘Everything is ashes’

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Hamas released a video on Telegram Friday featuring the audio of a woman’s voice, who they said was one of the hostages. The audio file could not immediately be verified.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,284 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

A medical official at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah said eight people, including two children, were killed in an air strike that hit a house in Al-Bureij refugee camp.

Another source at Nuseirat’s Al-Awda Hospital reported three deaths in a strike on a car.

In northern Gaza, witnesses said that after carrying out a three-week-long operation in the town of Jabalia and its neighbouring refugee camp, troops had ordered residents of nearby Beit Hanoun to evacuate ahead of an imminent assault.

The Israeli army said troops “completed their mission in eastern Jabalia and began preparation for continued operations in the Gaza Strip”.

Jabalia shopkeeper Belal al-Kahlot said there was nothing left of his store after the Israeli operation. “Everything is ashes.”

The Israeli military announced the deaths of two soldiers in Gaza, taking to 294 the number of Israeli troops killed since the start of ground operations in late October.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned on October 25 that without immediate deliveries of fuel it will soon have to sharply cut back relief operations across the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded and hit by devastating Israeli airstrikes since Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel more than two weeks ago.

The warning came as hospitals in Gaza struggled to treat masses of wounded with dwindling resources, and health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory said the death toll was soaring as Israeli jets continued striking the territory overnight into Wednesday.

The Israeli military said its strikes had killed militants and destroyed tunnels, command centres, weapons storehouses and other military targets, which it has accused Hamas of hiding among Gaza’s civilian population. Gaza-based militants have been launching unrelenting rocket barrages into Israel since the conflict started.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the airstrikes killed at least 704 people between Monday and Tuesday, mostly women and children. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors.

The death toll was unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even greater loss of life could come when Israel launches an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas militants.

In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the U.S. could not verify the one-day death toll. “The Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, and I think that all needs to be factored into anything that they put out publicly.”

Israel said on Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, an increase from the 320 strikes the day before. The U.N. says about 1.4 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now internally displaced, with almost 6,00,000 crowded into U.N. shelters.

Gaza’s residents have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

In recent days, Israel allowed a small number of trucks filled with aid to come over the border with Egypt but barred deliveries of fuel — needed to power hospital generators — to keep it out of Hamas’ hands.

The U.N. said it had managed to deliver some of the aid in recent days to hospitals treating the wounded. But the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest provider of humanitarian services in Gaza, said it was running out of fuel.

Officials said they were forced to reduce their operations as they rationed what little fuel they had.

“Without fuel our trucks cannot go around to further places in the strip for distribution,” said Lily Esposito, a spokesperson for the agency. “We will have to make decisions on what activities we keep or not with little fuel.”

Meanwhile, more than half of Gaza’s primary healthcare facilities, and roughly a third of its hospitals, have stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.

Overwhelmed hospital staff struggled to triage cases as constant waves of wounded were brought in. The Health Ministry said many wounded are laid on the ground without even simple medical aid and others wait for days for surgeries because there are so many critical cases.

The Health Ministry says more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.

The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government. Hamas is also holding some 222 people that it captured and brought back to Gaza.

The conflict threatened to spread across the region, as Israeli airstrikes hit Syrian military sites in the south on Wednesday, killing eight soldiers and wounding seven, according to Syria’s state-run SANA news agency.

The Israeli military said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, its jets had struck Syrian military infrastructure and mortar systems in response to rocket launches from Syria.

Israel has launched several strikes on Syria in recent days, including strikes that put the Damascus and Aleppo airports out of service, in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel has been fighting the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah across the Lebanese border in recent weeks.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met on Wednesday with top Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials in their first reported meeting since the war started. Such a meeting could signal coordination between the groups, as Hezbollah officials warned Israel against launching a ground offensive in Gaza.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Iran was helping Hamas, with intelligence and by “whipping up incitement against Israel across the world.” He said Iranian proxies were also operating against Israel from Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Fighting also erupted in the West Bank, which has seen a major spike in violence.

Islamic Jihad militants said they fought with Israeli forces in Jenin overnight. The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said Israel killed four Palestinians in Jenin, including a 15-year-old, and two others in other towns. That brought the total number of those killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7 to 102.

Across central and south Gaza, where Israel told civilians to take shelter, there were multiple scenes of rescuers pulling the dead and wounded out of large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings. Graphic photos and video shot by the AP showed rescuers unearthing bodies of children from multiple ruins.

A father knelt on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah next to the bodies of three lifeless children cocooned in bloodied sheets. Later, at the nearby morgue, workers prayed over 24 dead wrapped in body bags, several of them the size of small children.

“Buildings that collapsed on residents killed dozens at a time in several cases, witnesses said. Two families lost 47 members in a levelled home in Rafah,” the Health Ministry said.

In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more remained buried. The legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage where workers dug through the dirt, concrete and rebar.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that the proportionate response to the October 7 attack is “a total destruction” of the militants. “It is not only Israel’s right to destroy Hamas. It’s our duty,” he said.

On Wednesday, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said his country will stop issuing visas to U.N. personnel after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum.” It was unclear what the action, if followed through with, would mean for U.N. aid personnel working in Gaza and the West Bank.

“It’s time to teach them a lesson,” Erdan told Army Radio, accusing the U.N. chief of justifying a slaughter.

The U.N. chief told the Security Council on Tuesday that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Mr. Guterres also said “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shake hands with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in Amman, Jordan, on October 13, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived, on October 13, at the Israeli city of Tel Aviv to meet with senior government leaders and see firsthand some of the U.S. weapons and security assistance that Washington rapidly delivered to Israel in the first week of its war with the militant Hamas group.

Mr. Austin is the second high-level U.S. official to visit Israel in two days. His quick trip from Brussels, where he was attending a NATO Defence Ministers meeting, comes a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the region on October 12.

Mr. Blinken is continuing the frantic Mideast diplomacy, seeking to avert an expanded regional conflict. Mr. Austin is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant, and the Israeli War Cabinet.

His arrival comes as Israel’s military directed hundreds of thousands of residents in Gaza City to evacuate “for their own safety and protection,” ahead of a feared Israeli ground offensive. Gaza’s Hamas rulers responded by calling on Palestinians to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm” against Israel.

Defence officials travelling with Mr. Austin said he wants to underscore America’s unwavering support for the people of Israel and that the United States is committed to making sure the country has what it needs to defend itself.

A senior defence official said the U.S. has already given Israel small diameter bombs as well as interceptor missiles for its Iron Dome system and more will be delivered. Other munitions are expected to arrive on October 13.

Mr. Austin has spoken nearly daily with Gallant, and directed the rapid shift of the U.S. ships, intelligence support and other assets to Israel and the region.

Within hours after the brutal Hamas attack across the border into Israel, the U.S. moved warships and aircraft to the region.

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group is already in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and a second carrier was departing on Friday from Virginia, also heading to the region.

Mr. Austin declined to say if the U.S. is doing surveillance flights in the region, but the U.S. is providing intelligence and other planning assistance to the Israelis, including advice on the hostage situation.

A day after visiting Israel to offer the Joe Biden administration’s diplomatic support in person, Mr. Blinken was in Jordan on Friday and held talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II. They did not speak to reporters after the meeting.

Antony Blinken then went on to a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has a home in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

In the meeting with the king, Mr. Blinken discussed Hamas’ attack last Saturday and efforts to release all hostages the militants seized, as well as efforts to “prevent the conflict from widening,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Mr. Blinken “underscored that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination and discussed ways to address the humanitarian needs of civilians in Gaza while Israel conducts legitimate security operations to defend itself from terrorism.” The monarch rules over a country with a large Palestinian population and has a vested interest in their status while Abbas runs the Palestinian Authority that controls the West Bank.

According to a palace statement, Abdullah stressed the need to open humanitarian corridors for medical aid and relief into Gaza while protecting civilians and working to end the escalation of the conflict.

He appealed against hindering the work of international agencies and warned against any attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and elsewhere, or to cause their internal displacement.

Earlier on Friday, Israel’s military had told some one million Palestinians living in Gaza to evacuate the north, according to the United Nations — an unprecedented order for almost half the population of the sealed-off territory ahead an expected ground invasion by Israel against the ruling Hamas.

The King also urged for the protection of innocent civilians on all sides, in line with shared human values, international law, and international humanitarian law.

Later Friday, Mr. Blinken is to fly to Doha for meetings with Qatari officials who have close contacts with the Hamas leadership and have been exploring an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israel for the release of dozens of Israelis and foreigners taken hostage by Hamas during the unprecedented incursion of the militants into southern Israel last weekend.

Antony Blinken will make a brief stop in Bahrain and end the day in Saudi Arabia, a key player in the Arab world that has been considering normalising ties with Israel, a U.S.-mediated process that is now on hold. He will also travel to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt over the weekend.