Regional leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, have demanded an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, reports said.
The Gulf kingdom was to host an extraordinary summit of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Saturday followed by an emergency Arab League summit on Sunday but the two were merged into one due to the exceptional nature of the situation in besieged Gaza.
According to the reports, it was an emergency meeting after Hamas militants' October 7 attack on Israel, which left about 1,200 people dead, and over two hundred people were taken hostage.
The Iranian President, according to reports, said that the time had come for action over the conflict in Gaza rather than talk.
"Gaza is not an arena for words. It should be for action," Raisi said at Tehran airport before departing for the summit. "Today, the unity of the Islamic countries is very important," he was quoted as saying in the reports.
The Saudi Crown Prince also called for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip.
"We demand an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and deliveries of humanitarian assistance," he told the Islamic-Arab gathering in the Saudi capital.
Mohammed bin Salman also called the continuing hostilities in Gaza an "obvious failure in the work of the UN Security Council" and insisted that the only way to bring peace to the region was to give legal rights to the Palestinian people.