United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken left Saudi Arabia for Egypt on Thursday after meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the port city of Jeddah on Wednesday, where they discussed efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Saudi Arabian media reported.

Blinken is scheduled to meet with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan, the UAE’s international cooperation minister and a top Palestinian official in Cairo, according to an Egyptian foreign ministry note.

On March 19 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed a plea from U.S. President Joe Biden to call off plans for a ground assault of Rafah, the city on the southern edge of Gaza sheltering more than half the enclave’s 2.3 million people.

(Reuters)