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US secretary of state to focus on Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal; at least 20 killed in attacks on city formerly designated safe zone by Israeli military and now sheltering more than 1 million people, UN agency says
- US says strikes on Iran-linked militias just ‘the beginning’ of its response
- Overnight Israeli airstrikes kill scores in Gaza as fears grow of push into Rafah
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis with me, Helen Livingstone.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, is due to arrive in Saudi Arabia on his fifth visit to the region since October. He is also expected to travel to Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the West Bank this week, focusing on advancing talks on the return of hostages taken from Israel by Hamas in exchange for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza.
The total death toll in Gaza since 7 October has risen to 27,365. A kindergarten in Rafah sheltering displaced families was among the places hit by Israel over the weekend.
US national security advisor Jake Sullivan said there would be more steps in the American response to last weekend’s deadly drone attack on US soldiers in Jordan. Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, he said the retaliatory strikes launched on Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria on Friday were “the beginning, not the end, of our response”.
Later, the US military said it had struck a Houthi land attack cruise missile early on Sunday and four anti-ship cruise missiles hours later “all of which were prepared to launch against ships in the Red Sea”. It was the third batch of US strikes against Iran-backed militias in the Middle East in as many days.
The head of Iraq’s pro-Iran Hashed al-Shaabi alliance demanded the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from the country after the deadly strikes, warning that the US was “playing with fire”. “They targeted administration offices, a (Hashed) hospital, they struck forces tasked with protecting the borders,” Faleh al-Fayyad said at a funeral ceremony for members of the group killed in the US strikes.
Iran warned the US against any move against the Iranian-flagged ship Behshad, which is stationed in the Red Sea and suspected by the US of providing surveillance information to help direct Houthi onshore cruise-missile attacks on commercial shipping in the area. Any attack on the ship would be at the risk of those taking such steps, Tehran said.
A Houthi military spokesman warned that US and British strikes on Yemen on Saturday would not go “unanswered”. “These attacks will not discourage Yemeni forces and the nation from maintaining their support for Palestinians in the face of the Zionist occupation and crimes,” Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanani, also warned that these attacks are “in clear contradiction with the repeated claims of Washington and London that they do not want the expansion of war and conflict in the region,” while Hamas said the strikes would bring “further turmoil” to the Middle East.
Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, told the Wall Street Journal that the US president, Joe Biden, had not given Israel sufficient support to its war in Gaza. “Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir told the newspaper in an article published on Sunday. “If [former US president Donald] Trump was in power, the US conduct would be completely different.”
France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné said he rejected the “forced displacement” of Palestinians into Egypt from the Gaza Strip, where Israeli bombardment has pushed hundreds of thousands against the border. Séjourné was on his first Middle East tour, and met his counterparts in Egypt and Jordan.
Israel’s army said on Sunday its forces had raided a Hamas training facility in Gaza where militants prepared for the 7 October attack on Israel. The facility in the Palestinian territory’s main southern city of Khan Younis contained models of Israeli military bases, armoured vehicles, as well as entry points to kibbutzim, the army said in a statement.
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