CAIRO, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Houthi group in Yemen fired missiles at U.S. and British vessels in the Red Sea on Tuesday as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was midway through a regional trip to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Blinken's ongoing diplomatic tour is his fifth to the Middle East since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October last year in an attempt to stop it from spreading and his efforts have yielded few results.

His current tour is complicated by an increasingly unstable regional situation, even though Qatar announced late Tuesday that it had received a "positive response" from Hamas to the latest proposal on a Gaza ceasefire-for-hostage deal.

Fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants continued in both southern and northern parts of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Hezbollah and Israeli soldiers are engaged in confrontations on the Israel-Lebanon border on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, to retaliate the Houthis' attacks in the Red Sea and the death of three American soldiers near the Jordan-Syria border, the United States has escalated its military campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Red Sea, a move that raises concerns about a possible expansion of the regional conflicts.

ESCALATED U.S. STRIKES

Since Jan. 12, the United States and Britain have launched rounds of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in retaliation for the Houthis' attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis have been targeting ships that they claim have links to Israel to show solidarity with the Palestinians.

On Saturday night, the United States and Britain carried out joint airstrikes on Houthi militia targets in Yemen, the third time in two weeks.

Just the day before, the U.S. military also launched airstrikes on over 85 targets in Iraq and Syria that were connected to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and affiliated militia groups in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan on Jan. 28.

Osama Danura, a political expert based in the Syrian capital Damascus, lambasted the U.S. attacks in the Middle East.

Instead of addressing the Gaza conflict diplomatically and politically, the United States has escalated the conflict through hostility, endangering peace in the already volatile region, he said.

Trita Parsi, the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a U.S.-based think tank, doubted the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes.

"The aim is to degrade their ability to strike over a longer period of time, albeit at the risk of starting a regional war. This is ultimately a suboptimal strategy... The most effective way to shift the interest of these militias is through a ceasefire in Gaza," Parsi was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying.

"PEACEKEEPING MISSION" FOR U.S. INTERESTS

Blinken's current five-day tour, which is scheduled to end on Feb. 8 and covers Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and the West Bank, comes at a time when the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip has led many Arab countries and even some U.S. allies in Europe to question the biased U.S. Mideast policies that favor Israel.

The United States is adopting a posture of mediating a ceasefire to appease allies and ease anti-American sentiments in Arab countries, said Liu Xinlu, dean of the School of Arabic Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Professor Ding Long of Shanghai International Studies University said the incumbent U.S. administration has its political calculus behind the ongoing mediation efforts in the Middle East.

Biden does not want the Gaza conflict and the Red Sea issue to negatively affect his chances of being reelected as U.S. president, he said.

Tarek Fahmy, professor of political science at Cairo University, said that while the U.S. government seeks a ceasefire in Gaza, it continues to launch attacks on Houthi militias and targets in Iraq and Syria, which indicates confusion in the U.S. Mideast policy.

Not only does it weaken the United States' credibility in the Middle East, but also demonstrates its inability to address the current challenges in the region, Fahmy noted.

VIOLENCE CONTINUES

Before Blinken's scheduled visit to Israel on Wednesday to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials, fighting in Gaza continued on Tuesday amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

Palestinian factions confirmed in separate statements that Palestinian militants and Israeli forces engaged in combat in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis, which has been the target of an Israeli military offensive for several weeks.

Eyewitnesses in Khan Younis told Xinhua that Israeli forces on Tuesday destroyed a house near the Nasser Hospital and blew up a residential square.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces bombarded and clashed with Palestinian militants in a number of areas and neighborhoods of Gaza City, eyewitnesses said.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry said in a press statement on Tuesday that Israeli forces had killed 107 Palestinians and wounded 143 others in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths and injuries to 27,585 and 66,978, respectively.

The World Health Organization said in early February that 100,000 people in Gaza, or about 4.3 percent of the enclave's 2.3 million population, were injured, missing or presumed dead as the situation deteriorated in the enclave since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October last year.

Bassam Salhi, general secretary of the Palestinian People's Party, said that the United States has never seriously considered a ceasefire in the conflict.

Blinken's frequent visits to the Middle East are simply an attempt to save Biden from losing votes during his reelection campaign, said Salhi. Enditem

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