The US secretary of state Antony Blinken has met with Israeli leaders in his push for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas to impress on them that “the time is now” for an agreement that would free hostages and bring a pause in the nearly seven months of war.

Blinken, on his seventh visit to the region since the war erupted, said that Hamas would bear the blame for any failure to achieve a deal.

A truce could avert an Israeli incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering. Blinken on Wednesday also told families of hostages held in Gaza that Hamas needs to say yes to the deal.

Violent clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and counter demonstrations broke out at the University of California in Los Angeles. Here is our video report.

My colleague Chris Michael is live blogging the latest on that situation here.

A US vascular surgeon who left Gaza after a stint as a volunteer said on Wednesday nothing had prepared him for the scale of injuries he had faced there.

Speaking to Reuters, Shariq Sayeed, from Atlanta said he saw dozens of patients a day, telling the news agency:

Vascular surgery is really a disease for older patients and I would say I had never operated on anybody less than 16, and that was the majority of patients that we did this time around. Most were patients 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 years of age. Mostly shrapnel wounds, and that was something I have never dealt with, that was something new. And unfortunately there is a very high incidence of infection as well so once you have an amputation that doesn’t heal, you end up getting a higher amputation.

Ismail Mehr, an anaesthesiologist from New York state, who led the Gaza mission, told Reuters the volunteer medics were “speechless at what we saw” when they arrived in southern Gaza in April.

Truly everywhere I saw was destruction in Khan Younis, not a single building standing. I hope and I pray that Rafah is not attacked. The health system will not be able to take care of that. It will be a complete catastrophe.

Media in Israel and Lebanon are publishing outline details of the deal on the table for hostage releases and a pause in fighting in Gaza. It was initially published in the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar daily.

The details are quite intricate, and the Guardian has not independently verified the source of the document, but in an initial phase, three female hostages would be released every three days for the first 33 days, including soldiers. 40 Palestinain female detainees would be released by Israel in return for each female soldier. The IDF would agree to keep Gaza clear of all air traffic for between eight and ten hours on the days of the hostage release.

A second phase would start on the 34th day as living hostages, including male soldiers would be released in exchange for further prisoners. A third phase would involved the release of the bodies of dead hostages, and a five-year rehabilitation plan under which there would be a commitment for Palestinians not to build infrastructure for military purposes in Gaza or receive raw materials that could be used for such purposes.

A British police officer has been charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly publishing an image in support of Hamas, a group banned in Britain as a terrorist organisation, police said on Wednesday.

The constable was arrested last November and charged following an investigation by British counter-terrorism officers, Reuters reports the police said in a statement.

He has been suspended from his job with West Yorkshire police and is due to appear before London Westminster magistrates court on Thursday.

We reported earlier about a protest being staged in Glasgow in Scotland, blockading the weapons manufacturer BAE Systems. The campaign behind the demonstration claims that over 1,000 workers and trade unionists are taking part in protests across multiple locations, with blockades at BAE Systems arms factories in Glasgow, south Wales and Lancashire, and also at the Department of Business and Trade in London.

A spokesperson for the group said “Our movement forced the issue of an arms embargo on to the table and polling shows the majority of the British public want to see arms sales to Israel banned.

“The government has sought to play down the scale of its arms supplies to Israel, but the reality is UK arms and military support play a vital role in the Israeli war machine.

“If arms company bosses and Britain’s political elite won’t impose an arms embargo, we, the workers, will enforce it from below.”

A political row has broken out in Israel after comments by Orit Strook, who is minister for settlement and national missions. The far-right politician of the Religious Zionist party yesterday described the prospect of a hostage deal with Hamas as “terrible”.

She said it would be a betrayal of soldiers “who left everything behind and went out to fight for goals that the government defined, and we throw it in the trash to save 22 people or 33 or I don’t know how many. Such a government has no right to exist.”

Minister without portfolio in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government Hili Tropper has said her words were insensitive to the families of hostages, while Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid countered on social media that “a government with 22 or 33 extremist coalition members has no right to exist.”

Strook has previously been criticised for implying that doctors could be allowed to refuse to treat gay patients.

Clashes have erupted on University of California campus in Los Angeles. My colleague Chris Michael is covering the latest developments on our live blog with a focus on US protests.

Reuters has a little more detail on Stéphane Séjourné’s surprise trip to Egypt today, which follows his visits to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

France has three dual-nationals still held hostage by Hamas after the group’s assault on Israel on 7 October and has worked closely with Cairo on providing humanitarian aid and medical assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.

Reuters reports, citing French diplomats, in talks with Egyptian officials he will assess whether those three hostages, who are not part of the Israeli military, could be on the list of people released and how close a deal actually is.

Paris also wants to put a French proposal to defuse tensions between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah high on the agenda in case a Gaza truce is agreed, diplomats said.

The last time there was a pause in fighting in Gaza and a hostage release deal, although Hezbollah was not a formal party to the deal, hostilities between Israel and anti-Israeli forces in southern Lebanon also mostly paused.

Israel’s military has provided an operational update on its activities in the Gaza Strip, where it claims it has “struck and destroyed a number of terror targets belonging to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations, including weapon storage facilities, military structures, launch sites, and mortar launchers used to fire toward IDF troops.”

The statement also asserts that Isreal’s troops have “found weapons stockpiles, documents, and military equipment” while conducting searches within the territory.

The claims have not been independently verified.

Israel’s military says that since the beginning of ground operations in Gaza on 27 October, 263 soldiers have been killed, and 1,593 wounded. The IDF says that of the wounded, 250 are in hospital, with 25 of those “seriously wounded”.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday that US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s comments on a Gaza ceasefire are an attempt to put pressure on the Palestinian group and acquit Israel.

Abu Zuhri also told Reuters that the group was still studying the recent ceasefire offer.

The Hamas-led health ministry has issued updated casualty figures, claiming that at least 34,568 Palestinians have been killed and 77,765 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October.

It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.

Hamas has asked Egypt and Qatar for more clarity on terms of deal – reports

Blinken tells hostage families 'keep the faith' after speaking to Tel Aviv demonstration