Biden to visit Israel as Gaza ground invasion looms

TEL AVIV (AFP) - US President Joe Biden will visit Israel Wednesday in a show of support as Washington tries to prevent the escalating war against Hamas in Gaza from spilling over into a wider Middle East conflict.

The trip will come 12 days after the Palestinian militants burst through Israel's heavily fortified Gaza border, shooting, stabbing and burning to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

Israel has responded with withering air strikes that have killed more than 2,700 people, also mainly civilians. It has also imposed a crippling siege on Gaza and deployed tens of thousands of troops to the border in preparation for a full-scale ground offensive.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas while also seeking to rescue the at least 199 hostages taken into Gaza by the Islamist Hamas, which has released a video of one of the captives, French-Israeli woman Mia Shem.

Her mother, Keren Shem, made an emotional plea for her safe return, at a Tel Aviv press conference. "I ask world leaders that my daughter be returned to us in the state that she is today, as well as the other hostages," she said. "I am begging the world to bring my baby back home."

Israel is still reeling from the worst attack in the country's 75-year history, which has brought a mass mobilisation of reservists and the evacuation of about 500,000 people from areas near Gaza and Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, back in Israel after a whistlestop regional tour, said Biden's visit would be a statement of 'solidarity with Israel' and an 'ironclad commitment to its security'. Washington has already sent two aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean "to deter hostile actions against Israel".