Saudi Arabia ‘making unremitting efforts’ to reduce Gaza tensions, says Crown Prince
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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Salman stressed the need to stop any Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
CAIRO – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Salman stressed in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the kingdom is “making unremitting efforts” regionally and internationally to stop the intensification of the Israel-Hamas war, the Saudi state news agency reported on Wednesday.
In a statement, the Crown Prince asserted the need to stop any Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, the agency said. Saudi Arabia firmly supports the Palestinian cause and attempts to achieve a comprehensive and just peace, it added.
Mr Erdogan on Wednesday told the Crown Prince that Turkey had started work to get humanitarian aid to civilians affected by the war, the Turkish presidency said.
Turkey has offered to mediate the latest conflict, which began on Saturday when gunmen of the Palestinian militant group Hamas rampaged through Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and taking scores of hostages to Gaza.
Israel has retaliated with air strikes that have killed more than 1,100 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Saturday’s assault, the biggest incursion into Israel in decades, coincides with United States-backed moves to push Saudi Arabia towards normalising ties with Israel in return for a defence deal between Washington and Riyadh.
Gaza, a tiny coastal strip of land wedged between Israel in the north and east and Egypt to the south-west, is home to some 2.3 million people who have been living under a blockade since Hamas took control there in 2007. REUTERS