Top international diplomats discussed strategies for keeping the Gaza war from spreading beyond Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sunday, exactly three months after the start of the conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, were on separate trips to the region to try to quell spillover from the three-month-old war into Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Red Sea shipping lanes.
Israel and Hezbollah often trade fire across the Lebanese border, the West Bank is seething with anger, and the Houthis in Yemen seem determined to continue attacks on Red Sea shipping until Israel stops bombarding Palestinians in Gaza.
Blinken was in Amman, Jordan, after stops in Turkey and Greece. Borrell was on a Jan. 5-7 trip to Lebanon.
Both told reporters their priority was quelling spillover from the fighting. "We have an intense focus on preventing this conflict from spreading," Blinken told reporters before heading to Jordan from Chania, Greece, on his fourth trip to the region since Oct. 7
Palestinian health ministry casualty figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians, but the ministry has said that 70% of Gaza's dead are women and people under 18.
The fighting has displaced most of Gaza's 2.3 million population, with many homes and civilian infrastructure left in ruins amid acute shortages of food, water, and medicine.
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