US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to attend a humanitarian aid conference for the Gaza Strip hosted by Jordan on Tuesday, as he continues his Middle East tour to secure a deal to end the war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas.
The conference, dubbed "Call for Action: Urgent Humanitarian Response for Gaza," has been organized by Jordan, Egypt and the UN.
The meeting will be attended by the leaders, foreign ministers and officials of 75 countries as well as representatives of international organizations including the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to the conference website.
"The war in Gaza is now in its eighth month, with massive loss of life among civilians and suffering for the entire population of over 2.3 million Palestinians across the Strip," the organizers said.
"Famine is imminent in many parts of Gaza; trauma is widespread; every part of Gaza is in ruins. No place is safe in the Strip, and access to food, water, shelter, or medicine is practically non-existent."
In order to ease the suffering of the civilian population in the sealed-off Palestinian territory, the conference aims to "seek commitments for a collective, coordinated response to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza," among other things.
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attacks on October 7, which saw militants killing some 1,200 people across southern Israeli communities and taking another 250 hostage to Gaza, in what was the worst massacre in the country's history.
Israel responded with massive airstrikes and launched a ground offensive into Gaza at the end of October. More than 36,500 Palestinians are said to have been killed in the ongoing fighting, and much of the coastal strip has been rendered uninhabitable for those who remain.
Aid organizations on the ground have stressed for months that the amounts of aid reaching the civilian population are nowhere near enough.
