Saudi Arabia hosts regional summit to discuss Israel-Hamas war

Saudi Arabia has hosted a summit of leaders from Arab states and the Islamic world to discuss Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip on Saturday.

They included Ebrahim Raisi, the president of Iran, who is the first Iranian leader to visit Saudi Arabia for 11 years.

In his opening remarks at the summit in Riyadh on Saturday, Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman called for an end to the war.

“We condemn the military aggression and attacks against civilians in the Gaza Strip, as well as the persistent violations of international humanitarian law and human rights by the Israeli occupation authorities, and emphasise the need to stop this war and forced migration,” he said.

In Gaza on Saturday Israeli soldiers encircled the territory’s largest hospital where doctors said five patients, including a premature baby, died after the last generator ran out of fuel.

Israel says there are bunkers under the Shifa hospital that serve as Hamas’s main headquarters.

This latest war is the deadliest eruption of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades.

More than 11,070 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

At least 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, according to its government.

And more than one and half million Palestinians have been made homeless, which is around three quarters of Gaza’s entire population.

Africanews/Hauwa M.