The United States kept up pressure on Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians during a fierce offensive against Hamas militants across Gaza, even as Washington vetoed a UN Security Council demand for an immediate ceasefire.
Fighting escalated and the Palestinian death toll rose on Friday, with Israel pounding the enclave from north to south in an expanded phase of the two-month-old war against the Islamist group Hamas.
Decrying a “spiralling humanitarian nightmare”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared that nowhere in Gaza was safe for civilians, hours before the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution backed by the vast majority of its members calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
The vote left Washington diplomatically isolated on the 15-member council.
Thirteen members voted in favour of the draft resolution put forward by the United Arab Emirates, while Britain abstained.
Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the council: “We do not support this resolution’s call for an unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war.”
The United States and Israel oppose a ceasefire, saying it would only benefit Hamas, which Israel has vowed to annihilate in response to the militants’ deadly Oct. 7 cross-border rampage.
Washington instead supports “pauses” like the seven-day halt in fighting that saw Hamas release some hostages and the humanitarian aid flow increase.
The deal broke down on Dec. 1.
Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told the council the vote means that “millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance.”
Ezzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, condemned the U.S. veto as “inhumane.”
as in the south in Khan Younis, where Israeli forces reached the heart of the enclave’s second-biggest city on Wednesday.
Israel’s chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel had detained more than 200 suspects from Gaza in the last 48 hours and dozens were taken to Israel for questioning.
Reuters journalists in southern Gaza have seen dead and wounded swamping the main Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, where there was no room on the floor on Friday for arriving patients sprawled across blood-smeared tiles.
With the fighting now going on in all directions, there was no place left to flee, said Yamen, sheltering at a school in central Gaza with his family.
“Inside the school is like outside it: the same feeling of fear of near death, the same suffering of starvation,” he said.
