US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a press conference. File photo

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said Israel lacked a "credible plan" to protect some 1.4 million Palestinian civilians in Rafah and warned an Israeli attack could create an insurgency by failing to kill all Hamas fighters in the southern Gazan city.

"Israel is on a trajectory potentially to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas fighters left or if it leaves a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas," Blinken said on NBC's Meet the Press.

Hamas fighters, he said, already are returning to areas of northern Gaza that Israel claimed to have cleared.

Israel's planned invasion of Rafah has helped fuel the deepest tensions in relations between Israel and its main ally in generations.

NBC and CBS News aired interviews with Blinken dominated by President Joe Biden's decision to pause a shipment to Israel of bombs over fears of massive civilian casualties in Rafah and a State Department report that Israel's use of US-supplied arms may have broken international law.

The report, which was unrelated to the bomb shipment, found no specific violations justifying withholding US military aid, saying the chaos of war prevented verification of individual alleged breaches.

Reuters