Intense fighting in Gaza area: Blinken

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said there is intense fighting going on in the Gaza area and the focus right now is on helping Israel recover the territory that has been taken by Hamas militant group, noting that the issue of intelligence failure would be probed into a bit later.

Israel witnessed a surprise and unprecedented multifront attack – by air, land and sea – by the Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, in its southern parts on Saturday morning.

More than 600 people, including soldiers, have been killed so far and more than 2,000 injured in Israel – the deadliest day for the country in at least 50 years. In the Gaza Strip, there are more than 300 deaths and about 1,500 wounded in Israel's counterattack, media reports said on Sunday.

“The challenge for Israel and the challenge for all who support Israel and oppose horrific acts of terrorism is again to take measures that provide for accountability for that's happened and also to do our best to ensure that this doesn't happen again. That is likely to take some time. It’s fraught with very difficult decisions for the Israelis to make,” Blinken told ABC News in an interview.

This is the worst attack on Israel since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, 50 years ago, he told CNN in another interview.

“I don't want to speculate, get into hypotheticals, …this is our 24-hour or so into this. As I said, there remains intense fighting in the Gaza area. And the focus has to be on helping Israel recover the territory that has been taken briefly by Hamas, protecting its citizens and taking whatever measures are necessary to avoid this repeating itself,” Blinken said, a day after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel.