Israel bombarded targets in Gaza on Saturday after the United States blocked an extraordinary UN bid for a ceasefire in the war with Hamas that has triggered alerts of an ‘apocalyptic’ humanitarian situation.
Aid workers say Gaza’s humanitarian system is on the verge of collapse, as disease and starvation threaten.
The situation ‘is not just a catastrophe, it’s apocalyptic,’ said Bushra Khalidi of Oxfam.
Washington’s veto was swiftly condemned by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, whose health ministry put the latest death toll in Gaza at 17,490, mostly women and children.
An Israeli strike on the southern city of Khan Yunis killed six people, while five others died in a separate attack in Rafah, the ministry said Saturday.
It added that, over a 24-hour period, 71 dead and 160 wounded had arrived at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah after persistent bombings. Gunfire was heard and flashes of light that silhouetted palm trees were seen overnight in the city’s Al-Zawaida district.
At Nasser hospital in the central city of Khan Yunis, an AFP correspondent saw a child on a makeshift stretcher and others simply sitting on the floor waiting to receive care.
Outside, firefighters poured water onto the flames of a burning building partly destroyed by an Israeli strike.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres triggered the rare Security Council vote by invoking a measure unused in decades.
He sought the council’s endorsement of a ceasefire because, he said, rapidly deteriorating conditions make it ‘impossible for meaningful humanitarian operations’, with potentially irreversible implications for regional peace and security.
The United States on Friday vetoed the Security Council resolution.
US envoy Robert Wood said it was ‘divorced from reality’ and ‘would leave Hamas in place able to repeat what it did on October 7’.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said he ‘holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people’ in Gaza after the US veto.
‘The president has described the American position as aggressive and immoral, a blatant violation of all humanitarian values and principles, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women, and elderly in Gaza’ due to its support for Israel, said a statement from Abbas’s office.
The resolution’s sponsor, the United Arab Emirates, said it was ‘deeply disappointed’ by the result.
Abbas said Saturday that ‘US policy makes it complicit in the crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem’.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday denounced the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution for Gaza, describing the international body as the ‘Israel protection council’.
‘Since October 7, the security council has become an Israel protection and defence council,’ Erdogan said.
Washington dashed a growing clamour for a halt to fighting that had been led by UN chief Antonio Guterres and Arab nations.
‘Is this justice?’ asked Erdogan, adding that ‘the world is bigger than five,’ a reference to the five veto-wielding nations in the UN Security Council.
‘Another world is possible, but without America,’ the Turkish leader said.
‘The United States stands by Israel with its money and military equipment. Hey, America! How much are you going to pay for that?’ he added.
‘Every day the Declaration of Human Rights is violated in Gaza’, he said, as the world this weekend celebrates the 75th anniversary of the declaration.
Avril Benoit, head of the Doctors Without Borders charity, described the US veto as a ‘sharp contrast to the values it professes to uphold’.
There was anger, too, at a residential area of Rafah destroyed in an Israeli strike.
‘What resolution did the Security Council ever approve and was implemented for our cause and Palestinian people?’ Mohammed al-Khatib asked from among the rubble.
Hamas denounced the veto as ‘a direct participation of the occupation in killing our people’.
Iran, which backs Hamas, warned about the possible ‘uncontrollable explosion in the situation of the region’ after US move.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the top diplomat of the Islamic republic, also appealed for the immediate opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to enable humanitarian aid to be sent into the Gaza Strip.
‘As long as America supports the crimes of the Zionist regime (Israel) and the continuation of the war… there is a possibility of an uncontrollable explosion in the situation of the region,’ Amir-Abdollahian told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a phone call, according to a foreign ministry statement.
The Iranian foreign minister praised the UN chief’s decision to use Article 99 of the UN Charter as ‘brave action to maintain international peace and security’.
‘The Israeli regime’s claim that Hamas has violated the ceasefire is completely false,’ Amir-Abdollahian told Guterres, adding that US support for Israel ‘has made it difficult to achieve a lasting ceasefire’.
Many of the 1.9 million Gazans displaced by the war have headed south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp.
One of only two partially operating hospitals in Gaza’s north, Al-Awda, ‘is surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks, and fighting is ongoing in its vicinity’, the UN said.
Nearby in Jabalia district, the soil in front of shuttered shops has been dug up and turned into a cemetery where men buried more bodies.
Aid groups emphasised the worsening conditions in Gaza, where people sleep in the streets, and essentials like diapers are unavailable.
Alexandra Saieh, of Save the Children, spoke of ‘maggots being picked from wounds and children undergoing amputations without anaesthetic.’
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby reiterated Washington’s calls for Israel to do more to protect civilians.
Washington provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.
An Israeli hostage held by Hamas in Gaza has been killed, the man’s kibbutz community said Saturday after the Palestinian militant group claimed he had died during a failed rescue attempt.
Sahar Baruch, 25, is the latest confirmed fatality among scores of Israelis and foreigners taken captive during Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel.
On Friday the Israeli army said two soldiers were wounded in an overnight hostage rescue operation that failed to retrieve any captives.
Hamas said fighters of its military wing, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, had ‘succeeded in foiling an Israeli attempt to free an Israeli captive’.
‘A fierce gunfight broke out between al-Qassam fighters and the Israeli special force, leaving many soldiers wounded while the captive Israeli… was announced killed,’ Hamas said in an English-language statement late on Friday.
It released a video showing what it said was the hostage’s body. AFP was unable to independently verify its authenticity.
