Israeli operations in Gaza are underway after the US vetoed its draft resolution UN Security Councilfollowing an unprecedented initiative by its Secretary General, who strongly demanded that “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire be declared”.

According to the IDF, troops found grenades and AK-47 rifles in a school. At the same time, IAF fighter jets struck terror targets and terrorists as ground troops continued to fight in different locations.

Specifically, troops of the Kfir brigade confronted a Hamas cell at a school in the Shejaiya neighborhoodof Gaza City. The troops killed the gunmen and later found weapons and military equipment inside the classrooms.

Also, Armored Corps troops operating with the Parachute Brigade found and destroyed a tunnel shaft in Shejaiya, which the IDF said was part of a larger network of tunnels.

IDF

TUNNEL

In Beit Hanoun, the IDF says the 5th Reserve Infantry Brigade came under fire from Hamas fighters, who were firing from a mosque and an UNRWA school.

“Hamas’ abuse of schools has turned children’s safe havens into militant hideouts,” the IDF said.

Hamas condemned the US veto

Hamas “strongly condemned” them early morning the American vetodescribing Washington’s position as “immoral and inhumane” and its “direct participation” in the “slaughter of our people”, with a statement by Izzat al-Resik, a member of the political bureau of the Palestinian Islamist movement.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombardment has claimed the lives of 17,487 people, of whom more than two-thirds were women, children and teenagers, according to the latest tally from the Hamas Health Ministry, released yesterday.

In Khan Younis, the main city in the southern part of the Palestinian enclave, an Israeli strike killed six people, while in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, another strike killed five overnight.

The war erupted after an unprecedented attack by Hamas militants on southern sectors of Israeli territory that killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in addition to the 240 hostages taken to the Gaza Strip — 138 remain hostages — according to Israeli authorities.

In retaliation, Israel’s civil-military leadership vowed to “eliminate” Hamas, in power since 2007 in the Gaza Strip, a movement labeled a “terrorist” organization by Israel, the European Union and the United States.

According to the UN, more than half the homes have been damaged or destroyed in the small, highly populated Palestinian enclave, where 1.9 million people—or 85 percent of the population—have been forced from their homes.

“It’s so cold and the stage is so small. I have nothing but the clothes I wear. I don’t know what the next stage will be,” sighs Mahmoud Abu Rayyan, who was forced to leave his home in Beit Lahia (north).

“moral failure”

The American veto in the Security Council was quickly condemned by humanitarian organizations, with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) judging that the inaction of the top body of the international organization makes it “complicit in the carnage” in the Gaza Strip.

The Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohamed Stageh, in turn criticized the “failure of the Security Council to adopt a draft resolution aimed at ending the attack on our people in the Gaza Strip due to the use of its veto by the US”, which to him it is a “shame” and amounts to “a new blank check to the occupying power to slaughter, destroy and displace”.

He added that the veto shows the US is “lying” when it says it is concerned about civilian casualties.

US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said that “we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire” because in the US’s view this would “simply plant the seeds of the next war”, while condemning the “moral failure” of the text’s absence condemning the attacks launched by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7.

Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, ruled for his part that it would “prevent the destruction of the terrorist organization Hamas, which commits war crimes and crimes against humanity” and would allow it “to continue to rule the Gaza Strip ».

Israel’s military said yesterday it had hit “over 450 targets” in 24 hours in the Gaza Strip, releasing footage of strikes launched by warships from the Mediterranean.

The Health Ministry of Hamas spoke of 40 dead near Gaza City (north) and dozens more in Jabalia and Khan Yunis (south).

“Nightmare” situation

After two months of war and bombardment from the air, land and sea, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the population of the Gaza Strip was “staring into the abyss”.

“The world is desperate, scared and outraged,” he stressed, adding that “all this is happening in the midst of a dire humanitarian situation that is worsening.”

Much of the 1.9 million displaced Gazans headed south, turning Rafah, on the —closed— border with Egypt, into a vast refugee camp.

As the toll of health and aid workers lost in the war continues to mount (Mr Guterres said at least 286 had died yesterday), a draft resolution submitted to the World Health Organization by 17 member countries and Palestine, which has observer status, demands that Israel fully respect its obligation to protect them.

The text calls on Israel to “guarantee the respect and protection of all medical and nursing personnel and workers in humanitarian organizations whose activity is exclusively medical, their means of transport and their equipment, as well as hospitals and other medical facilities”.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip remain operational.

As the growing number of civilian casualties in the enclave sparks an outcry, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters yesterday that Washington believes Israel must do more to protect innocents.

“We all recognize that more can be done to reduce civilian casualties. And we will continue to work with our Israeli counterparts to that end.”

The toll is also mounting in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces killed six Palestinians yesterday, according to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry.

For its part, the Israeli army officially says it has lost 91 soldiers in the Gaza Strip, while yesterday it said two of its members were injured in a failed operation to free hostages at night, adding that “many terrorists” were killed during it.

For its part, Hamas reported that a prisoner of its soldier was killed and released a video showing his corpse.

Rockets, launchers and other Hamas weapons, as well as a kilometer-long tunnel, were found at al-Azhar University in Gaza City, the Israeli military said, demanding that residents leave and move to the western part of the enclave.

In Iraq

An attack on the US embassy in Baghdad yesterday brought back into focus concerns that the war could spread to the region.

Rocket barrages launched at dawn targeted the American embassy, ​​inside the heavily guarded Green Zone, but no injuries were reported. The attack followed dozens of similar strikes against US troops and forces of the Washington-led international anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq and Syria.

In addition, three Hezbollah fighters and a Syrian were killed yesterday in an Israeli drone strike against their vehicle in southern Syria, according to the NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

While Iran’s foreign minister warned today against “the possibility” of an “uncontrollable explosion” in the Middle East if Washington continues to support Israel in the war.