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The United States’ top diplomat was in Jordan on Sunday as part of a Middle East tour aiming to ensure the Israel-Hamas war does not spread.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Amman on Saturday evening ahead of expected meetings with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
The war that began on October 7 with an unprecedented attack against Israel by Gaza-based Hamas militants triggered relentless retaliatory bombardment by Israel, leaving Gazans desperately in need of humanitarian aid.
Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ayman Safadi, in a meeting with Blinken, emphasised the “necessity of the immediate end to the aggression, of the protection of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and delivering adequate and lasting humanitarian and medical aid to all the areas of Gaza”, a foreign ministry statement on X said.
Blinken, who is seeking to get more aid into besieged Gaza, visited the World Food Programme’s regional coordination warehouse in the Jordanian capital, live AFPTV images showed
Inside the warehouse, stocked with pallets of aid and with a beeping forklift manoeuvring, the senior UN official in Jordan, Sheri Ritsema-Anderson, described the situation in Gaza as unlike anything she had seen during 15 years in the Middle East.
It is “catastrophic. This is epic,” she told reporters.
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