Israel-Hamas war: Israel strikes 450 targets in Gaza; US blocks UN vote on ‘immediate ceasefire’
Dramatic body-cam footage has emerged of a shootout in a Gaza School, where Israeli forces found tunnels connecting a classroom to a nearby Mosque. See the video. Warning: Graphic
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The United States vetoed at UN Security Council vote on a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all hostages.
The draft resolution was tabled by the United Arab Emirates and had 97 sponsors.
“After 63 days of conflict and after 18,000 people dead, there is nothing else left to do or say other than demand that this war be brought to an end,” the UAE’s representative said.
Thirteen countries voted in favour, while the US voted against and the UK abstained.
The US justified its decision by saying the process was “divorced from reality.”
Its representative told the Security Council the resolution failed to condemn the deadly Hamas attack that sparked the conflict and that it was “unsustainable”.
“No country could or should tolerate what Hamas did on 7 October,” he said, adding that the ceasefire would simply give Hamas time to regroup and plan its next attack.
“This resolution essentially says that Israel should just tolerate this, that it should allow this terror to go unchecked.”
The UK echoed the concerns, saying it could not support a resolution that failed to “condemn the atrocities” that were committed, but it did call for further humanitarian pauses.
“Israel needs to be able to address the threat posed by Hamas,” the British representative said.
Israel’s ambassador, Gilad Erdan, thanked the US for the decision.
“It is shocking that while Hamas is firing rockets at Israel from population centres in southern Gaza, the UN is busy debating a distorted resolution that will enable Hamas’ terrorists to stay in power in Gaza and does not condemn Hamas or call for the release of the hostages. A ceasefire will be possible only with the return of all the hostages and the destruction of Hamas,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter.
However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned the US risks complicity in war crimes.
“By continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as it commits atrocities, including collectively punishing the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, the US risks complicity in war crimes,” said HRW’s Louis Charbonneau.
The extraordinary vote followed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s move to invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter in an attempt to “avoid a humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
The United States has given Israel a deadline of the end of the year to complete its mission.
Heavy fighting is still underway across the Gaza Strip.
At least three barrages of Hamas rockets were deployed today and intercepted by the Iron Dome, while the IDF has been conducting tunnel-to-tunnel and house-to-house raids.
Dramatic body-cam footage released on X, formerly Twitter, shows Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops firing multiple rounds as they make their way through a school in Gaza.
The Times of Israel reports soldiers encountered a Hamas cell as they searched the building, as well as a tunnel shaft connecting a classroom to a nearby mosque.
“This is another example of Hamas’s cynical abuse of schools, they have turned places that should be safe-havens for children into hideouts for terrorists,” the IDF said.
Emanuel Fabian, the newspaper’s military correspondent, posted the video online saying the IDF was battling Hamas operatives in the Shejaiya neighbourhood in the north.
Another offensive is underway in the city of Khan Yunis, in the south, with additional strikes in Gaza City and Jabalia where residents have been told to start moving west.
Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant said at a Hanukkah ceremony on Friday his country is seeing signs that indicate “Hamas is beginning to break in Gaza”.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, at least 17,487 people have been killed and more than 56,400 wounded since the war began.
It has also declared infectious diseases a major concern.
Vast areas of Gaza have been reduced to a wasteland, with the UN estimating 80 per cent of the population has been displaced and facing shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine.
The fighting has pushed Gazans further and further south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp for many of the 1.9 million displaced.
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ROCKETS FIRED AT US EMBASSY
Rockets were launched at the US embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, the mission said, the latest in a flurry of such attacks amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“A multi-rocket attack was launched at US and Coalition forces in the vicinity of Union III and the Baghdad embassy complex” without causing any reported casualties or damage, a US official said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
In a statement, the US embassy said “two salvos of rockets” were fired at the mission compound in the early hours of Friday morning, local time.
“Indications are the attacks were initiated by Iran-aligned militias,” said a US spokesperson.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani warned attacks on embassies undermine the country’s security and stability.
ISRAEL STRIKES HEZBOLLAH IN SYRIA
Three pro-Hezbollah fighters and a Syrian citizen were killed in an Israeli drone strike on their car in the south of Syria, according to AFP.
The four fighters “working on behalf of Hezbollah” were killed in Madinat al-Baath town in the province of Quneitra, close to the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The monitor was unable however to confirm if the combatants were Syrian or not, but they were not part of the Syrian army, Abdel Rahman said.
TOP HAMAS COMMANDERS ADDED TO TERRORIST LIST
The European Union added two of Hamas’s top military commanders to its terrorist blacklist, linking them directly to the October 7 attacks on Israel.
Brussels said Mohammed Deif, 58-year-old commander general of the Hamas military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and his deputy Marwan Issa had been added to its sanctions list.
“The two individuals are subject to the freezing of their funds and other financial assets in EU member states,” it said.
“It is also prohibited for EU operators to make funds and economic resources available to them.”
IDF STRIKES 450 TARGETS IN GAZA
Israel military has revealed it has hit more than 400 targets in Gaza in the past day - the highest reported since the end of the ceasefire deal last week.
“Approximately 450 targets were struck from the air, sea, and ground as IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip continued extensive battles with terrorists,” the IDF said in a statement.
“The troops continue to operate to locate and destroy underground tunnel shafts, weapons, and additional terror infrastructure.”
ISRAEL KILLED SIX PEOPLE IN WEST BANK: PALESTINIAN HEALTH MINISTRY
Israeli forces shot dead six Palestinians on Friday in a raid on a refugee camp in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The ministry did not identify those who died, but said they had been killed “by bullets from the occupation (Israel) in the Al-Fara refugee camp” near Tubas.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Clashes escalated with the (Israeli) forces who stormed the camp amid intense fire and... explosions,” said the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Violence has flared in the territory since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry said four Palestinians, two of them teenagers, were killed in multiple Israeli operations around the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
The Palestinian Authority says Israeli fire and settler attacks in the West Bank have killed at least 263 Palestinians since the Israel-Hamas war began.
This exceeds the entire death toll of 235, most of them Palestinians, killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last year.
Last month, 14 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli raid in the city of Jenin, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.
It was the highest West Bank death toll from a single raid since 2005, according to United Nations records.
Israel’s military said at the time that soldiers and other security forces had killed “several terrorists” with a drone strike and others in gunfights, seizing weapons and destroyed a “tunnel shaft containing ready-to-use explosive devices”.
Israeli officials and military have regularly charged that the Jenin refugee camp in the city had turned into a “terrorist hub” where armed groups are present alongside tens of thousands of residents.
According to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), since the war broke out Palestinian gunshot victims in the occupied West Bank are now being shot more often in the head and torso rather than the limbs.
BIDEN’S CALL TO NETANYAHU
The subject of humanitarian corridors was raised by United States President Joe Biden in his latest call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The President emphasised the critical need to protect civilians and to separate the civilian population from Hamas including through corridors that allow people to move safely from defined areas of hostilities,” the White House said in a statement.
The United States has strongly defended Israel’s right to defend itself after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, but believes too many Palestinian civilians are dying as the country retaliates.
The Hamas-run health ministry on Friday claimed the death toll had risen to 17177.
The US has also told Israel, which is now attacking southern Gaza following the breakdown of a short-lived truce last week, that numbers of casualties and displacements should not be as great as during its initial assault on the north.
DOZENS OF PALESTINIANS STRIPPED, DETAINED
Footage from Gaza shows dozens of Palestinian men stripped and detained by Israeli troops after they were taken from UN-affiliated schools.
The footage circulated widely on social media shows the mostly naked men blindfolded and bound with their arms behind their backs.
Video and images showed several groups of men piled into the back of a military vehicle, grouped on a sidewalk, or kneeling in the sand.
An eyewitness said at least seven men were shot dead by troops for not complying with the soldiers’ orders fast enough, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
At least some of the men are civilians with no known affiliation to militant groups, according to a conversation CNN had with one of their relatives and a statement by one of their employers, a news network.
Among those detained is journalist Diaa Kahlout, who works for London-based The New Arab.
His sister told Euro-Med Monitor that Mr Kahlout was forced to leave his disabled seven-year-old child “on her own” and was taken at gunpoint before he was stripped and “beaten severely”.
The news outlet also confirmed Mr Kahout’s brothers and relatives were arrested, forced to disrobe and subjected to humiliating searches. They were then taken to an undisclosed location.
It called on “the international community, journalists’ rights defenders and watchdogs, and human rights bodies to denounce this ongoing assault”.
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