🔴Live: US vetoes UN Security Council Gaza ceasefire push for third time

The UN Security Council meets on the Israel-Hamas war at UN headquarters in New York City on February 20, 2024. The United States vetoed a new draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. © Angela Weiss, AFP

The United States on Tuesday again vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution on the Israel-Hamas war, blocking a demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. The veto comes as the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced it is pausing deliveries of life-saving food aid to northern Gaza until conditions allow for safe distributions. Read our liveblog for all the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war. 

Summary:

• The UN's food agency on Tuesday paused deliveries of aid to northern Gaza despite widespread hunger, after a convoy of trucks faced gunfire and looting.
• The United States on Tuesday vetoed for the third time a draft UN Security Council resolution on the Israel-Hamas war, blocking a demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Thirteen council members voted in favor of the Algerian-drafted text, while Britain abstained.
• The United Nations' top court is holding a week of hearings on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.
• The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 29,195 people have been killed and 69,170 wounded in Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7, the vast majority women and children. Israeli officials say about 1,140 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel. Militant fighters took some 250 hostages during the attack and 132 are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

Yesterday's key developments:

• EU countries, except Hungary, on Monday called for an "immediate humanitarian pause" in the Gaza war, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
• The European Union also warned Israel against launching an offensive in Rafah that the bloc's foreign ministers said would create a disaster for the roughly 1.5 million refugees crammed into the city on the southern edge of Gaza.
• Israel's military on Monday published new images and voiced concern about a mother and her two boys -- including a baby who is the youngest hostage seized by Hamas militants.
• Brazil said Monday it had summoned the Israeli ambassador in a tit-for-tat move escalating a row that erupted when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday compared Israel's military campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP, Reuters)