The United States on Friday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate ceasefire in the intense fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The United States' deputy representative at the UN, Robert Wood, said the resolution was "divorced from reality" and "would have not moved the needle forward on the ground." Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).
This blog is no longer being updated. For more of our coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, please click here.
Summary:
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The United States on Friday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate ceasefire in the intense fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter to urge the organisation’s most powerful body to call for a ceasefire.
- Heavy urban combat raged in and around Gaza's biggest cities on Friday, with major battles reported in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north and Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
- Israel and the UN signalled that the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into the Gaza Strip might be opened soon to allow aid in. Since the start of the war, the tightly controlled Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt has been the only point of entry into the enclave.
- Hamas attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, according to the Israeli government. Since then, at least 17,487 people have been killed in Israel's ensuing assault on the Gaza Strip, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry said. At least 46,000 people have been injured and at least 7,600 people are missing, the Hamas media office said.
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Yesterday's key developments:
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Israeli troops battled Hamas fighters Thursday in the heart of southern Gaza's main city where a top militant leader is believed to be hiding, while pressing their offensive across the besieged territory. Breaking through Hamas's defences of Gaza's second largest city, Israeli troops, tanks, armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers rolled into Khan Younis, forcing already displaced civilians to flee again, witnesses said.
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Palestinian gunshot victims in the occupied West Bank are now being shot more often in the head and torso rather than the limbs, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Thursday. The medical charity's international president, who recently returned from the West Bank, said that since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7, there had been a "clear shift" in the injuries being witnessed by MSF staff in West Bank hospitals.
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An investigation by Agence France-Presse into the strike in southern Lebanon on October 13 that killed a Reuters journalist and injured six others, including two from AFP, points to a tank shell only used by the Israeli army in this high-tension border region. Jointly conducted with Airwars, an NGO that investigates attacks on civilians in conflict situations, the investigation found that the attack involved a 120-mm tank shell only used by the Israeli army in this region.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in his strongest public criticism of Israel's conduct of the war on Hamas in south Gaza, said there was a gap between the government's declared intentions to protect civilians and the casualties.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
