US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday discussed with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi the negotiations to secure an immediate ceasefire for at least six weeks in the war between Israel and Hamas and the release of all hostages kidnapped by the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

The top US diplomat is in Egypt after visiting Saudi Arabia a day earlier, as part of his latest Middle East tour. He also discussed with Sisi the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.

Sisi stressed the need for a truce to address the escalating humanitarian crisis and warned of the dangers of a military operation in Rafah, the last zone of relative safety for civilians where more than half of Gaza's population is now sheltering, pressed against the Egyptian border.

Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the United States, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the Gazan city as a final Hamas bastion harboring a quarter of the group's fighters.

The prospect of tanks and troops storming Rafah worries Washington in the absence of a plan to move more than a million Palestinians who have sheltered there since being displaced elsewhere in the Gaza Strip during the five-month-old war.