At least 22 people dead from Israeli airstrikes in Rafah

Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza city of Rafah have killed at least 22 people, including six women and five children, Gaza health officials said, reports the AP agency.

One of the children killed in the attacks on Monday night was only 5 days old.

Israel has regularly carried out airstrikes on Rafah since the war began on October 7 and has threatened to send in ground troops, saying Rafah is Hamas's last major stronghold in Gaza. Over a million Palestinians have sought refuge in the city on the border with Egypt. The United States of America and its allies have urged Israel not to occupy Rafah, fearing a humanitarian catastrophe.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarked on Monday on his seventh diplomatic mission to the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war more than six months ago, the Associated Press reports.

Blinken's visit - which includes just over a day in Saudi Arabia before stops in Jordan and Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday - comes amid renewed concerns about the spread of conflict in the Middle East and once-promising prospects for rapprochement. Israeli-Saudi effectively.

Israel refuses to consider one of the Saudis' main conditions for normalizing relations: the creation of a Palestinian state.