Israel's demand for lasting control over two strategic corridors in Gaza, which Hamas has long rejected, threatens to unravel cease-fire talks aimed at ending the 10-month-old war, freeing scores of hostages and preventing an even wider conflict.

Officials close to the negotiations have said Israel wants to maintain a military presence in a narrow buffer zone along the Gaza-Egypt border it calls the Philadelphi corridor and in an area it carved out that cuts off northern Gaza from the south, known as the Netzarim corridor.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Egypt on Tuesday as part of his latest Middle East tour to push forward talks aiming to end the 10-month Gaza war.

Blinken held talks with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in the coastal city of El Alamein following a visit to Israel, where he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli military said Tuesday that it recovered the bodies of six hostages taken in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that started the war in Gaza.

The recovery came as the United States, Egypt and Qatar are trying to mediate a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of scores of hostages held by the militant group.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured him of support for a U.S. proposal to bridge gaps on reaching a Gaza ceasefire, and pressed Hamas to agree.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a “positive” meeting Monday that was conducted in “a good atmosphere,” Netanyahu’s office said in an English-language post on the X platform.

“The meeting lasted approximately three hours. The Prime Minister reiterated Israel's commitment to the current American proposal on the release of our hostages, which takes into account Israel's security needs, which he strongly insists on,” the office added.

A British diplomat based in Ireland resigned over arms sales to Israel with his email circulated online saying the UK's foreign office "may be complicit in war crimes," it emerged Monday.

The United Nations warned Monday of a "deepening crisis" of malnutrition in the Middle East and North Africa affecting a third of children.

"At least 77 million – or 1 in 3 – children in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have some form of malnutrition," the UN children's agency UNICEF said in a statement.

A record number of aid workers were killed in conflicts around the world last year, and this year may be on course to be even deadlier, the United Nations said Monday.

The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that 280 aid workers were killed in 33 countries in 2023 — more than double the previous year’s figure of 118. It said that more than half of last year’s deaths were registered in the first three months of the Israel-Hamas war that started in October, mostly as a result of airstrikes.

Palestinian militant groups Hamas and the Islamic Jihad on Monday claimed responsibility for an attempted suicide bombing that rocked Tel Aviv overnight Sunday.

In a joint statement, the two groups said suicide attacks inside Israel will continue as long as Israel continues with its massacres, assassinations and the displacement of civilians.

Police in Istanbul have launched a "large-scale investigation" after a Palestinian was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting as they sat in a car, officials and media said Monday.

The killer dropped a handgun fitted with a silencer at the scene, the Istanbul Governor's Office said in a brief statement.