U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken crisscrossed the Middle East on Tuesday as part of Washington's latest diplomatic push to secure a Gaza ceasefire and a hostage release deal as major areas of dispute remained between Israel and Hamas.

Blinken first met with Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in the coastal town of Alamein. Egypt has been helping mediate the on-off Gaza talks for months along with the U.S. and Qatar.

Sisi said after their meeting that it was time to put an end to the 10-month-old war in Gaza and warned of the conflict expanding in the region.

The top U.S. diplomat, who is on his ninth visit to the region since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in October, later traveled to Doha and is expected to meet with Qatari Minister of State Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi.

A plan for Blinken to meet with the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al Thani has been scrapped, a senior U.S. official said, as al-Thani is not feeling well.

On Monday, Blinken confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a U.S. "bridging proposal" aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides, after talks last week paused without a breakthrough, and urged Hamas to accept it too.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters travelling with Blinken that the U.S. expects ceasefire talks to continue this week.

The Palestinian militant group has not explicitly rejected the proposal. But Hamas said it overturns what was previously agreed, without giving specifics, and accused Israel and its U.S. ally of spinning out negotiations in bad faith.

At stake is the fate of tiny, crowded Gaza, where Israel's military campaign has killed more than 40,000 people since October according to Palestinian health authorities, and of the remaining hostages being held there.

The war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

On Tuesday, Israel's military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages from southern Gaza. According to Israeli authorities, 109 hostages now remain in the Palestinian territory, around a third of them believed to be dead.

In Gaza, Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in central and southern areas, and Palestinian health authorities said at least 39 people had been killed on Tuesday in Israeli strikes, including on a school housing displaced people.

Israel's military said it had struck Hamas militants embedded in the school.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said it was still waiting for polio vaccines to arrive after the disease was discovered in the territory, where most people now live in tents or shelters without proper sanitation. It echoed a call by the U.N. last week for a ceasefire to allow the vaccination campaign.