Doha: US President Donald Trump on Thursday visited a US base installation at the centre of American involvement in the Middle East as he uses his four-day visit to Gulf states to reject the “interventionism” of America’s past in the region.
Trump plans to address troops at Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base, which was a major staging ground during the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also supported the recent US air campaign against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, though the strikes themselves came from two aircraft carriers in the region.
The president has held up Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar as models for economic development in a region plagued by conflict as he works to entice Iran to come to terms with his administration on a deal to curb its nuclear programme.
The President also meets business leaders in Qatar and heads to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
On the other hand, multiple airstrikes have hit Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis overnight, killing more than 50 people in a second consecutive night of heavy bombing.
An Associated Press cameraman in Khan Younis counted 10 airstrikes on the city overnight into Thursday, and saw numerous bodies taken to the morgue in the city’s Nasser Hospital. Some bodies arrived in pieces, with some body bags containing the remains of multiple people. The hospital’s morgue confirmed 54 people had been killed.
The dead included a journalist working for Qatari television network Al Araby TV, the network announced on social media, saying Hasan Samour had been killed along with 11 members of his family in one of the strikes in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.
It was the second night of heavy bombing, after airstrikes Wednesday on northern and southern Gaza killed at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children.
The strikes come as US President Donald Trump visits the Middle East, visiting Gulf states but not Israel. There had been widespread hope that Trump’s regional visit could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed earlier in the week to push ahead with a promised escalation of force in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip to pursue his aim of destroying the Hamas militant group.