U.S. forces have conducted strikes in Syria against Iranian-aligned militia groups for a second day in a row in response to further attacks on U.S. personnel, U.S. Central Command said late Tuesday.

In the latest retaliatory strikes, U.S. forces hit a weapons storage and logistics facility after militia groups launched a rocket attack on U.S. personnel at Patrol Base Shaddadi in eastern Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is urging Israel to allow displaced Palestinians and aid back into Gaza and says it should end the war against Hamas now that it’s achieved its main security aims.

“The situation is so difficult and so dramatic that to fully redress it, to fully answer the needs of people, the best way to do that is to end the war,” Blinken told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, an ally of Hamas, released a video on Wednesday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7 attack on Israel.

The video shows Sasha Troufanov, likely speaking under duress, describing the harsh conditions inside Gaza, warning against military operations to free him and calling on Israelis to protest for his release.

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 46 people in the Gaza Strip in the past day, including 11 at a makeshift cafeteria in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone, medics said.

The latest bombardment came as the United States said it would not reduce its military support for Israel after a deadline passed for allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza. The State Department cited some progress, even as international aid groups said Israel had failed to meet the U.S. demands.

Russia has asked Israel to avoid launching aerial strikes as part of its war against Lebanon's Hezbollah near one of Moscow's bases in Syria, a top official said Wednesday.

Palestinian medical officials say two Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 14 people, including two children and a woman, most in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone.

One strike late Monday hit a makeshift cafeteria used by displaced people in Muwasi, the center of the so-called humanitarian zone. At least 11 people were killed, including two children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital, where the casualties were taken. Video from the scene showed men pulling bloodied wounded from among tables and chairs set up in the sand in an enclosure made of corrugated metal sheets.

Israel has failed to meet U.S. demands to allow greater humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, where conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month-old war, international aid organizations said Tuesday.

The Biden administration last month called on Israel to "surge" more food and other emergency aid into Gaza, giving it a 30-day deadline that was expiring Tuesday. It warned that failure to comply could trigger U.S. laws requiring it to scale back military support as Israel wages offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Arab and Muslim leaders have demanded that Israel withdraw from occupied Palestinian territories as a precondition for regional peace, while denouncing "shocking" Israeli crimes in war-ravaged Gaza.

A summit meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday gave the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's 57 nations a chance to speak with one voice on turmoil engulfing the region, more than a year into the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has begun a construction project along the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, apparently laying asphalt for a road right along the frontier, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show.

Israeli troops have entered the demilitarized zone during the work, the United Nations confirmed to the AP, a violation of the cease-fire rules governing the area.

"The world is waiting" for Donald Trump’s incoming U.S. government to "immediately" end Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref told a summit of Arab and Islamic countries on Monday.

"The American government is the main supporter of the actions of the Zionist regime (Israel), and the world is waiting for the promise of the new government of this country to immediately stop the war against the innocent people of Gaza and Lebanon," Aref told the joint Arab League and Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit.