18 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on house in Nuseirat refugee camp

Palestinian Territories – AFP

At least 18 people were killed in a strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp, the health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday.

The bombardments came after the Security Council approved a resolution demanding “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of life-saving aid be rushed to Gaza “at scale”.

It also called for creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities,” but did not seek an immediate end to combat.

Members had wrangled for days over the wording.

At Washington’s insistence, they toned down some provisions and avoided calling for a cease-fire that would stop the war.

It is still unclear what, if any, impact the vote will have on the ground where people of Gaza have been forced into crowded shelters or tents, struggling to find food, fuel, water and medical care.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a “humanitarian ceasefire” is the only way for aid “to be effectively delivered”.

The issue is not the number of aid trucks, he said, but “the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles” to aid distribution.

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, men gently led a weeping woman who had seen the bodies of relatives. A man crouched down in tears, his hand resting on a black body bag. Outside, others prayed before another corpse.

“What is going on in the corridors of the UN Security Council is nothing more than theatre and farce,” Rafat al-Aydi said, standing before the bodies which lay under a bush of bright red flowers. “This is a genocide.”

Allies, including the United States which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, have increasingly pressured Israel to avoid civilian casualties.

Photos approved for release by Israel’s army show soldiers moving in a Gaza wasteland of rubble where fires burn.

The UN estimates Israel’s war has displaced 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million population.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a majority of those uprooted from their homes were now going “entire days and nights without eating”, and “famine is looming”.

– Displaced again –

A one-week truce that Qatar helped mediate, with support from Egypt and the United States, ended on December 1. It saw 80 Israelis released from Gaza captivity in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel has repeatedly told Palestinians to make their way to areas in the tiny territory it says are safe, but even when they do they still have been bombarded.

Many people have been forced to move multiple times.

On Friday thousands fled central Gaza after an army evacuation order. It warned residents of Bureij, a refugee camp established about 70 years ago, to move “for their own security” towards Deir al-Balah city further south.

Donkey carts creaked with their belongings. Families pushed babies in prams and led elderly relatives through the crowd. They packed winter blankets for the road ahead.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the latest evacuation order would affect more than 150,000 people.

“The Israeli army just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing air strikes,” Thomas White, UNRWA’s Gaza director, wrote on social media.

At Deir al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital ambulances arrived with more bodies and wounded after an overnight strike.

Friday’s UN resolution only passed thanks to US and Russian abstentions.

It requests the appointment of a UN humanitarian coordinator to oversee and verify third-country aid to Gaza. But Israel would retain operational oversight of aid deliveries.

Hamas described the resolution as “an insufficient measure that does not respond to the catastrophic situation created by the Zionist (Israeli) war machine”.

– Drone strike off India –

A new attack on shipping Saturday added to fears of regional escalation from the war.

Maritime agencies said a drone strike damaged a merchant ship in waters off Veraval, India. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

An official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned of the “emergence of new resistance forces” and said other waterways could close unless Israel halted its war with Hamas.

Missiles from Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels have already disrupted Red Sea shipping.

US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said Iran “was deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea”.

There have also been regular exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, between Israeli forces and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran.