US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged both Israel and Hamas to finalise a Gaza truce, standing by US assessments that 90 per cent of a deal was ready, AFP reports.

Blinken said that the United States would be offering further ideas in the coming days through mediators Egypt and Qatar in hopes of sealing an agreement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with Fox News on Thursday denied a US official’s assessment that 90pc of a deal was ready, saying “It’s not close.”

But Blinken repeated the assessment at a news conference during a visit to Haiti, saying, “I think based on what I’ve seen, 90pc is agreed.”

“It’s really incumbent on both parties to get to yes on these remaining issues,” Blinken said.

“As close as I believe we are to getting a ceasefire agreement, every day that goes by where it is not finalised and the parties don’t say, ‘yes, period,’ is a day in which something else happens, and there is an intervening event which simply pushes things off and runs the risk of derailing what is a pretty fragile apple cart,” he said.