Israel-Gaza war live: US criticised for veto on UN ceasefire resolution | Israel-Gaza war

Heavy fighting continued overnight in northern Gaza, both from the air and on the ground, the Israel Defense Forces said on Saturday.

According to the IDF, fighters from the battle team of the Kafir brigade fought and killed a group in the area of ​​a school in the Shejaiya neighbourhood. IDF forces later found a number of Kalashnikov weapons, grenades and ammunition inside the classrooms.

An armoured force from the paratroopers’ brigade combat team destroyed a shaft in the Shejaiya neighbourhood that was part of an extensive underground route, the IDF said, with forces locating another shaft containing weapons and an elevator.

In the Beit Hanoun area, fighters of the 5th brigade’s combat team attacked a group that allegedly fired at them from a UNRWA mosque and school, the IDF said.

Iran has warned of the threat of an “uncontrollable explosion” of the situation in the Middle East, after the US vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, reports Agence France-Presse.

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 the UN secretary general António 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”.

Fighting resumed between Israel and Hamas on 1 December after a one-week truce that Israel says Hamas violated.

“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”.

An Israeli strike on the southern city of Khan Younis killed six people, while five others died in a separate attack in Rafah, the Hamas-run health ministry said on Saturday. It has put the latest death toll in Gaza at 17,487 people, mostly women and children.

Here starts our continuing live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. It’s just past 7.20am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• Rights groups have condemned the US for blocking a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, with Human Rights Watch saying the US risked “complicity in war crimes” by continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover.

• The US on Friday defied appeals from its Arab allies and the UN secretary general to back an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, instead vetoing the resolution. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1 with the UK abstaining. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has reportedly asked Congress to approve the sale of 45,000 shells for Israel’s Merkava tanks to be used in its offensive in Gaza.

• The Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said the US decision to block the resolution was “a turning point in history”. In a strongly worded address to the security council after the vote, Mansour said the results of the vote were “regrettable” and “disastrous”, warning that prolonging the war in Gaza “implies the continued commission of atrocities, the loss of more innocent lives, more destruction”.

• Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, thanked the US and Joe Biden for vetoing a draft security council resolution. Posting to social media, Erdan praised the US president for “standing firmly by our side” and for showing “leadership and values”.

• Hamas condemned the US veto at the UN security council, describing it as “unethical and inhumane”. “The US obstruction of the ceasefire resolution is a direct participation with the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing,” said Ezzat El-Reshiq, a member of the group’s political bureau.

• The UN security vote came after a dramatic warning from UN chief António Guterres that civil order in Gaza was breaking down. With the UN claiming its relief operation was grinding to a halt and its staff being killed, Guterres chose earlier this week to take the extremely rare step of invoking article 99 of the UN charter, which permits him to bring a threat to world security to the attention of the security council.

• The head of the main UN agency in Gaza (UNRWA) has said it was “the darkest hour” in the organisation’s history. Philippe Lazzarini said the agency is “barely” operational in Gaza, and that its staff – at least 130 of whom have been killed – “take their children to work, so they know they are safe or can die together.” “We are hanging on by our fingertips,” he said.

• The International Committee of the Red Cross has said it is concerned by images of semi-naked Palestinian men being paraded by the Israeli military in Gaza. While Israeli media initially suggested that the images, apparently filmed by at least one Israeli soldier, showed the surrender of Hamas fighters, several of the men pictured were identified as civilians, including a journalist.

• The European Commission has announced it will provide €125m (£107.2m, $134m) in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in 2024. The funds will go toward supporting humanitarian organisations working in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the commission said in a statement on Friday.

• Tributes poured in for the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer on Friday after friends said he was killed in a strike on Gaza. Alareer, who fiercely denounced Israel and its policies towards the Palestinians, was one of the leaders of a young generation of writers in Gaza who chose to write in English to tell their stories, with friends describing his defiance in the face of the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

• More journalists have been killed during Israel’s war with Hamas than in any other conflict in more than 30 years, a leading organisation representing journalists worldwide said. In its annual count of media worker deaths, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said 94 journalists had been killed so far this year and almost 400 others had been imprisoned.

• Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed remarks by the Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister that Hamas could serve as a junior partner in governing Gaza after the war. The authority’s prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said in an interview that the PA is working with US officials on a plan to run Gaza after the current conflict ends. “The Palestinian Authority is not the solution,” the Israeli prime minister responded.

• More than a dozen member states of the World Health Organization submitted a draft resolution on Friday that urged Israel to respect its obligations under international law to protect humanitarian workers in Gaza. Separately, the UN said late on Thursday that only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were functioning in any capacity.