US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield speaks after a vote to approve a resolution that "demands" all sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict allow the "safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale" at UN headquarters in New York on December 22, 2023. Photo: AFP/ Charly Triballeau
By Michelle Nichols, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams for Reuters
The UN Security Council approved a toned-down bid to boost humanitarian aid to Gaza and sought steps to create conditions to end fighting on Friday, hours after Israel signalled it was widening its ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave.
The United States, which is Israel's main ally and had threatened to veto the Security Council motion during days of wrangling, chose instead to abstain after language was changed on ending hostilities and monitoring aid, a move that let the vote go through.
Washington has regularly backed Israel's right to defend itself, but has grown increasingly concerned at the suffering of Gaza's 2.3 million people amid a soaring death toll and a humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
In its latest update on casualties, Gaza's health ministry said 20,057 Palestinians had been killed and 53,320 wounded in Israeli strikes since 7 October.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has vowed to eradicate Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, after the group's fighters launched a cross-border raid into southern Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The adopted Security Council resolution "calls for urgent steps to immediately allow safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access and to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities." The initial draft had called for "an urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities" to allow aid access.
The resolution also no longer diluted Israel's control over all aid deliveries to Gaza. Israel monitors the limited aid deliveries via the Rafah crossing from Egypt and the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing.
Before the UN vote, Israel said 5,405 aid trucks - carrying food, water and medical supplies - had entered Gaza since the start of the war. Aid groups said only a fraction of what is needed was coming in. A report by a U.N.-backed body said on Thursday the risk of famine was growing every day.
Air strikes, bombardments
In Gaza on Friday, as hopes faded for an imminent breakthrough in talks this week in Egypt aimed at getting warring Israel and Hamas to agree to a new truce, air strikes, artillery bombardments and fighting were reported across the coastal strip.
Israel's military ordered residents of Al-Bureij, in central Gaza, to move south immediately, indicating a new focus of the ground assault that has already devastated the north of the enclave and made a series of incursions in the south.
Some residents packed up donkey carts and left, but there was no immediate sign of large numbers from Al-Bureij joining the hundreds of thousands fleeing other areas.
"Where should we go to? There is no place safe," Ziad, a medic and father of six, told Reuters by phone. "They ask people to head to (the central Gaza city of) Deir Al-Balah, where they bomb day and night."
Palestinian children collect food at a donation point provided by a charity group in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on 6 December, 2023. Photo: AFP / Mohammed Abed
Residents reported Israeli tank shelling of eastern areas of Al-Bureij.
Israeli forces have previously engaged with Hamas gunmen on the edges of Al-Bureij but have yet to thrust deeper into the built-up area, which grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.
In the south, at least four civilians were killed in an air strike on a car in Rafah, a Palestinian rescue worker said. A boy, his face covered in blood, and a girl, were carried away from the scene, video showed. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
"Israel's indiscriminate strikes on Gaza have turned the north of the Strip into a pile of rubble," medical charity MSF said in a post on X. "In Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, south Gaza, the dead and wounded continue to arrive almost every day... Nowhere is safe."
The Israeli military has expressed regret for civilian deaths but has blamed Iran-backed Hamas for operating in densely populated areas or using civilians as human shields, an allegation the group denies.
Israel says 140 of its soldiers have been killed since it launched its ground incursion into Gaza on 20 October.
Hamas-affiliated Shehab news agency reported heavy shelling and air strikes on Jabalia al-Balad and Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza, and said that Israeli vehicles were trying to advance from the western side of Jabalia amid the sound of gunfire.
Reports in Palestinian media and footage shared by Gazans on social media showed bodies scattered in the street and some buried under rubble around the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military said in a statement its air force destroyed a long-range missile launch site in Juhor ad-Dik, central Gaza, from which, it said, "recent launches into Israeli territory were carried out" - a possible reference to an attack on Tel Aviv on Thursday.
A group representing families of Gaza hostages said on Friday that one captive - 73-year-old Gadi Haggai, a US-Israeli dual national - had died in captivity. It did not give details or say how the information was obtained.
- Reuters