LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Sunday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the Middle East braces for an expected ground invasion of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military.
• U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem will begin evacuating U.S. nationals by sea from Haifa to Cyprus.
• One Israeli was killed and at least two others were wounded in the northern Israeli border town of Shtula by fire from Lebanon.
• Israel Defense Forces spokesman said Hamas is blocking civilian Gazans from evacuating northern areas.
• U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas about the urgent need for humanitarian aid in Gaza, the White House said.
• The U.S. has sent a second aircraft carrier “to deter hostile actions against Israel,” the Pentagon said.

The Israeli Defense Forces international spokesman Sunday warned journalists and everyone else to be mindful of the “veracity” of the news information from Gaza.

During the briefing, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus showed a video of an explosion reported to have struck vehicles traveling to southern Gaza late Friday along Salah-al-Din Road, a major north-south highway that is one of just two evacuation routes for fleeing civilians. Conricus said Israel did not strike in that area, as IDF officials have repeatedly urged civilians to continue evacuating the enclave’s northern regions.

“We want people to go south,” said Conricus, who also showed separate footage of what he described as Hamas roadblocks designed to restrict civilian Gazan convoys from traveling south. VOA could not independently verify the images presented during the Conricus briefing.

The BBC also reported the same late-Friday explosion that did kill Gazan civilians as they fled. Like the IDF briefing, however, the BBC report does not specify whether the explosion was the result of a missile or an improvised explosive device planted along the road.

“If you’re a journalist or just listening to what’s going on, and you get information from the Gaza Strip, please be very, very skeptical of its veracity,” said Conricus.

The IDF spokesman repeated accounts of Hamas urging civilians to stay home and not evacuate as Israel has warned them to do for their own safety before Tel Avi launches a massive ground assault against the militants in northern Gaza.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the group in retaliation for a rampage by its fighters, who stormed through Israeli towns on October 7, killing 1,300 civilians and taking scores of hostages in the worst attack on civilians in Israel’s history.

According to a New York Times report, IDF officials say Israeli troops are increasing “readiness” for a planned ground invasion that has been delayed by poor weather conditions, and that any infantry ground advance through northern Gaza will be supported by tanks and covered by “war planes, helicopter gunships, aerial drones and artillery fired from land and sea.”

The Times report also quotes unnamed senior military officers who say Israel is aiming to destroy the Hamas political and military hierarchy.

The IDF has already saturated the border with thousands of reservists, troops and military equipment amid a relentless onslaught on the territory.

Death toll climbing

So far, Israeli strikes have killed about 1,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis is mounting in Gaza as Palestinians scrambled Saturday to evacuate from the northern part of Gaza and head south before the expected Israeli military offensive.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian warned Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza as soon as possible because they might lead to a widening of the war to other parts of the Middle East, if Hezbollah joins the battle. That would make Israel suffer “a huge earthquake.”

U.S. President Joe Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated the “unwavering” U.S. support for Israel and warned against anyone “seeking to expand the conflict,” a White House statement said. Biden also updated Netanyahu on U.S. military support to Israel.

Later Saturday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the U.S. was sending a second carrier strike group, the USS Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean. It would join the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which arrived this week.

“The increases to U.S. force posture signal the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and our resolve to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war,” Austin said in a statement.

Also Saturday, Russia asked the U.N. Security Council to vote Monday on a draft resolution on the Israel-Hamas conflict calling for a humanitarian cease-fire and condemning violence against civilians and all acts of terrorism.

Russian Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said he expected the vote to be scheduled for 3 p.m. EDT Monday.

Hostages appeal

The U.S. State Department confirmed on Saturday the deaths of 29 U.S. citizens during the Hamas attacks on Israel.

“We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected. We are not commenting further on the circumstances of the U.S. citizen deaths or the identities of the deceased at this time,” a department official said.

Israel’s military said early Saturday it confirmed that more than 120 civilians are being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas.

Rafah border

Washington has been working with Egypt, Israel and Qatar to open the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Saturday afternoon to allow Palestinian-Americans to leave, a senior State Department official said earlier.

The number of dual Palestinian-American citizens has been estimated at about 500 among the Gaza Strip’s population of 2 million. Washington hopes to get many of its nationals out of harm’s way.

It was unclear, though, whether Hamas would allow access to the crossing, a Hamas official said.

“There will be no migration from Gaza to Egypt,” he said, adding that “our decision is to stay in our land.”

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, an ardent enemy of Hamas, has also warned that a mass displacement from the enclave could mean an end to the aspirations of a Palestinian state.