Iran-backed Houthis target Greek and British cargo ships in Red Sea

Antony Blinken has visited Saudi Arabia at the start of a four-day trip to the Middle East, as pressure mounts on Washington to deliver a truce – and bring the region back from the brink – before Israel’s threatened assault on the last refuge for civilians in Gaza.

The US secretary of state is set to travel to the Gulf, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the occupied West Bank, in his fifth attempt at furious shuttle diplomacy in the region since October. The 7 October attack by Hamas that killed around 1,200 people in Israel and saw another 250 taken hostage, and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in response, has sparked clashes across the region. Gaza’s authorities say Israel’s air and ground assault has killed more than 27,400 Palestinians.

US officials have warned the situation in the Middle East is the most dangerous it has been in decades, as Iran-backed militias in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have entered the fray, attacking US positions and global shipping routes, in retaliation for support of Israel’s offensive.

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Iraq’s government is focused on avoiding a domestic or regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war but continuing attacks on the country threaten its hard-won stability, the UN envoy for Iraq has warned.

With the war raging in Gaza, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert told the UN Security Council that “the Middle East is at a critical juncture” and “the same is true for Iraq”.

Attacks originating from inside and outside Iraq will not only undo the country’s stability but “other achievements made in the past 18 months,” she said, adding that “messaging by strikes only serves to recklessly heighten tensions, to kill or injure people and to destroy property”.

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Israel’s military says 31 of the hostages in Gaza are dead – a fifth of the 136 people still being held captive by Hamas.

It comes after a document compiled by Israeli intelligence officers reported by the New York Times, suggested 32 have died since the Hamas attack inside Israel on 7 October and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in response.

Four military sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Israel was also assessing unconfirmed intelligence indicating that at least 20 other hostages may have also been killed, the paper reported.

Matt Mathers has more.

The Syrian military on Wednesday said Israeli airstrikes over the central city of Homs and its countryside have killed and wounded civilians.

Syrian state news agency SANA quoted an unnamed military official saying Tuesday’s strikes damaged both private and public property.

The Israeli jets reportedly struck the Syrian city and countryside from near the Lebanese coastal city of Tripoli. State television showed ambulances rushing to the scene of a strike, where wreckage and debris lay from a building that was hit.

The strikes come just days after the US launched retaliatory airstrikes in Syria targeting Iran-backed militants amid flaring tensions across the Middle East flare with the Israeli-Hamas war.

The war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe that has brought shortages of the most basic necessities.

Some of the hardest-hit are babies, young children and their parents, with diapers and formula either hard to find or spiking to unaffordable prices, leading parents to look to inadequate or even unsafe alternatives.

Their plight is further complicated due to sporadic aid deliveries that have been hobbled by Israeli restrictions and the relentless fighting.

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Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are starving as a result of Israel’s war against Hamas, according to aid agencies on the ground. But an even greater number of Palestinian lives may soon be at risk due to a decision by the US and its allies to freeze funding to the primary aid agency operating in the territory, following reports that a small number of employees were involved in the October 7 attacks.

Now, the agency has warned it may run out of money as early as this month, a worst-case scenario that aid groups have warned could cause widespread famine and death.

“They will die of hunger, they will die because they don’t have the insulin that UNRWA brings in, or they will die because a woman had a complicated childbirth and there was no UNRWA midwife to help her,” said Juliette Touma, director of communications at the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.

Richard Hall and Andrew Feinberg report.

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US secretary of state Antony Blinken is set to meet Israeli leaders as Hamas suggested it was open to a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

But both sides remain dug in on thus far elusive goals as the war enters its fifth month.

The deadliest round of fighting in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, levelled entire neighbourhoods, driven the vast majority of Gaza’s population from their homes, and pushed a quarter of the population to starvation.

Iran-backed militant groups across the region have conducted attacks, mostly on US and Israeli targets, in solidarity with the Palestinians, drawing reprisals as the risk of a wider conflict grows.

Israel remains deeply shaken by Hamas’s 7 October attack, in which militants burst through the country’s vaunted defences and rampaged across southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting some 250, around half of whom remain in captivity in Gaza.

The US, Israel, Qatar and Egypt have proposed a ceasefire of several weeks in return for a phased release of the hostages.

Hamas responded to the offer late on Tuesday in what it said was a “positive spirit” while reiterating its core demands for an end to the Israeli offensive and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, which president Joe Biden said were “a little over the top”.

Construction firms have seen the first jump in building costs since last autumn as Red Sea disruption sent shipping prices higher, according to a report.

The latest S&P Global/CIPS construction purchasing managers’ index (PMI) revealed that overall input costs rose last month for the first time since September and at the fastest pace since May last year.

Some firms flagged higher costs for imported building materials due to the Red Sea attacks on ships, according to S&P Global.

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