Israeli strikes kill dozens in Gaza as UN General Assembly calls for 'unconditional' ceasefire
GENEVA
A picture taken from Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip on Dec. 11, 2024, shows destroyed buildings inside the Palestinian territory, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli strikes Thursday killed 21 people including several children, hours after the U.N. General Assembly called for an immediate ceasefire in the devastated Palestinian territory.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said Israeli warplanes targeted two homes near Nuseirat refugee camp and Gaza City.
"Fifteen killed, including at least six children, and more than 17 wounded were recovered as a result of the Israeli bombing" of a building sheltering displaced people near Nuseirat, Basal told AFP.
The bodies of six others killed in a strike on an apartment in Gaza City were transferred to hospital, along with multiple wounded people, he added.
Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people and laid waste to the coastal territory in the more than 14 months since a Hamas attack on southern Israel sparked the war.
In the latest diplomatic attempt to end the violence, the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday adopted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
The non-binding resolution was rejected by the United States, Israel's main military backer.
But in recent days, there have been signs that months of failed ceasefire negotiations might be revived and a breakthrough achieved.
Families of the 96 hostages who remain in Gaza - including 34 the Israeli military says are dead - are pressing for their release.
UN vote
Ahead of the vote, Israel's U.N. envoy Danny Danon said: "The resolutions before the assembly today are beyond logic. (...) The vote today is not a vote for compassion. It is a vote for complicity."
The General Assembly often finds itself taking up measures that cannot get through the Security Council, which has been largely paralyzed on hot-button issues such as Gaza and Ukraine due to internal politics, and this time is no different.
The resolution, which is non-binding, demands "immediate access" to widespread humanitarian aid for the citizens of Gaza, especially in the besieged north of the territory.
Dozens of representatives of U.N. member states addressed the Assembly before the vote to offer their support to the Palestinians.
"Gaza doesn't exist anymore. It is destroyed," said Slovenia's U.N. envoy Samuel Zbogar. "History is the harshest critic of inaction."
'Price of silence'
That criticism was echoed by Algeria's deputy U.N. ambassador Nacim Gaouaoui, who said: "The price of silence and failure in the face of the Palestinian tragedy is a very heavy price, and it will be heavier tomorrow."
Hamas's October 2023 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to official figures. That count includes hostages who died or were killed while being held in Gaza.
Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the United Nations.
"Gaza today is the bleeding heart of Palestine," Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour said last week during the first day of debate in the Assembly's special session on the issue.
"The images of our children burning in tents, with no food in their bellies and no hopes and no horizon for the future, and after having endured pain and loss for more than a year, should haunt the conscience of the world and prompt action to end this nightmare," he said, calling for an end to the "impunity."
After Wednesday's vote, he said "we will keep knocking on the doors of the Security Council and the General Assembly until we see an immediate and unconditional ceasefire put in place."
The Gaza resolution calls on U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to present "proposals on how the United Nations could help to advance accountability" by using existing mechanisms or creating new ones based on past experience.
The Assembly, for example, created an international mechanism to gather evidence of crimes committed in Syria starting from the outbreak of civil war in 2011.
A second resolution calling on Israel to respect the mandate of the U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and allow it to continue its operations was passed Wednesday by a vote of 159-9 with 11 abstentions.
Israel has voted to ban the organization starting Jan. 28, after accusing some UNRWA employees of taking part in Hamas's devastating attack.