Saudi Arabia hosts emergency meetings of Arab League and Muslim bloc, with focus on Gaza

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Arab leaders and Iran’s president are in the Saudi capital today for summits expected to underscore demands that Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas end before the violence draws in other countries.

The emergency meetings of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation comes after Hamas terrorists’ bloody October 7 attacks that Israeli officials say left about 1,200 people dead and around 240 taken hostage.

Israel’s subsequent aerial and ground offensive has killed more than 11,000 people, mostly civilians and many of them children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures cannot be verified independently and are believed to also include terrorists and civilians killed by misfired rockets.

Aid groups have joined pleas for a ceasefire, warning of a humanitarian “catastrophe” in Gaza, where food, water and medicine are in short supply.

The Arab League aims to demonstrate “how the Arabs will move on the international scene to stop the aggression, support Palestine and its people, condemn the Israeli occupation, and hold it accountable for its crimes,” the bloc’s assistant secretary-general, Hossam Zaki, said this week.

But terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Friday said it did not “expect anything” from the meeting, criticizing Arab leaders for the delay.