At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Thursday, several of them children, in an Israeli airstrike on homes in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, medics told Reuters, quoted by BTA.
The Israeli airstrike destroyed a multi-story building, Palestinian medical officials said, the Associated Press reported.
The Nuseirat refugee camp was attacked just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden's national security adviser – Jake Sullivan, told reporters in Jerusalem that the recent ceasefire in Lebanon has helped clear the way for a potential agreement to end the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the deadly strike in Nuseirat.
Israel says it is trying to eliminate Hamas, which led the October 2023 attack on southern Israel that sparked the Gaza war. The Israeli military says Hamas fighters are hiding among the civilian population of Gaza.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last night that Syrian civilians must be protected after Turkish-backed Islamists overthrew the government in Damascus, Agence France-Presse reported, quoted by BTA.
Blinken spoke for more than an hour on Thursday evening in the Ankara airport lounge with Erdogan, who had just spoken with Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The head of US diplomacy "reiterated the importance of all political forces in Syria respecting human rights, international humanitarian law and taking all possible measures to protect civilians, including members of minority groups", State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Blinken urged the Turkish head of state to "The need to ensure that the coalition (created) to defeat the Islamic State group can continue to carry out its mission, which is critical," Miller added.
Turkey has raised security concerns over the situation in Syria, where it is battling Kurdish-led forces that Washington supports for their key role in the fight against the Islamic State jihadists.
Speaking before his departure for Turkey during a stopover in Jordan, the US secretary of state acknowledged the "real and clear interests" of Ankara's stance on PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) fighters.
“At the same time, we again want to avoid provoking any kind of additional conflict inside Syria“, he told reporters at the time.
“At a time when we want to see this transition to an interim government, to a better path for Syria, we also need to ensure that (the group) “Islamic State“ does not re-emerge. And the “Syrian Democratic Forces“ (SDF) are essential to ensuring that that does not happen,“ Blinken said.
The SDF controls large areas of northern Syria where Syrian Kurds have established an autonomous administration. But they are considered by Turkey to be offshoots of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Ankara considers a terrorist organization.
Blinken, who will leave office next month after Donald Trump's election victory, called for an "inclusive" process to form Syria's next government, respectful of all communities.
The former Syrian president was ousted on Sunday by a coalition of Islamist rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate. Mohammad al-Bashir was subsequently appointed prime minister in charge of the transition. He promised to establish "the rule of law."