Live updates | Blinken says more needs to be done to save Palestinian lives and for more aid

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says “far too many” Palestinians have died and more needs to be done to save lives and get aid where it’s most needed.

Blinken said in New Delhi Friday that the U.S. “appreciates” Israel’s steps to minimize civilian casualties but that’s not enough.

He said the U.S. has proposed additional ideas to the Israelis about how to accomplish that including longer “humanitarian pauses” and expanding the amount of assistance getting into Gaza.

Separately, United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk on Friday called for an investigation into what he called Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ bombardment and shelling” in densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip.

Turk urged Israel to end “the use of such methods and means of warfare,” adding that high levels of civilian casualties raises “serious concerns that these amount to disproportionate attacks in breach of international humanitarian law.”

Blinken’s and Turk’s remarks come as the Israeli military pushed deeper into dense urban neighborhoods in its battle with Hamas militants.

The fighting is prompting increasing numbers of civilians to flee south, and growing numbers of people have been living in and around hospitals, hoping it will be safer than their homes or United Nations shelters in the north, several of which have been hit repeatedly.

The World Health Organization said Friday that 20 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are no longer functioning, including a pediatric hospital that has stopped operations after a reported Israeli strike in the area.

Gaza’s largest city is the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 incursion in southern Israel that set off the war, now in its second month.

The number of Palestinians killed in the war has risen to over 10,800, including more than 4,400 children, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said. In the occupied West Bank, more than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the violence and Israeli raids.

More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the Hamas attack, and about 240 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.

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— Fights in bread lines, despair in shelters: War