Air strikes at a hospital in Gaza City by Israel has upended US diplomatic efforts aimed at fending off the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and thrown a dark shadow over president Joe Biden’s imminent visit to the region.
Late on Tuesday, Jordan cancelled a summit in Amman in which Biden had been due to hold talks with King Abdullah, the Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, The Guardian reported.
The cancellation came as the US president was leaving Washington for Israel for talks with Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday morning.
The Gaza health ministry claimed that more than 500 people had been killed at the hospital which, if confirmed, would make it the deadliest single bombing of all the five wars Israel and Palestine have fought over Gaza.
Hamas has blamed the blast on an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military has said the hospital was hit by a rocket barrage launched by Hamas.
In a statement late on Tuesday, Biden said he was “outraged” by the blast at the hospital and that he had directed his national security team to gather information about exactly what had happened.
The hospital explosion has become a lightning rod for anger across the region, sparking protests across the Middle East.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera the planned summit with Biden was cancelled because “there is no use in talking now about anything except stopping the war”.
