US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Cairo on Thursday on the last leg of his Middle East tour, Al Qahera News reported.

This comes a day after Blinken travelled to the West Bank from Israel and then to Bahrain to discuss the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the urgent need for protecting civilians.

Blinken’s tour also included Turkey, Greece, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

Blinken’s tour comes amid ongoing Israeli aggression in Gaza since October 7 with the death toll among Palestinian civilians surpassing 23,000, most of whom are women and children.

His visit also comes while the Houthis in Yemen have escalated their attacks against Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea in retaliation for the Israeli aggression against Palestinian civilians, causing some shipping lines to divert to longer routes.

In December, the US announced the creation of a naval protection force in the southern Red Sea to confront the Houthis attacks on merchant shipping. The coalition has many countries, including the UK, France, and Germany but the Middle East countries, except Bahrain, have refrained from joining the coalition to date.