Israeli strikes kill 45 civilians, including two children
Israel bombarded towns across southern Gaza on Tuesday with airstrikes
At least 45 Palestinians were killed, as Israeli forces pressed ahead with their offensive.
Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, warned the campaign in Gaza’s south will persist for months.
Israel has received renewed backing from the United States, despite rising international alarm over the skyrocketing civilian death toll.
In a hospital in the southern town of Rafah, Mahmoud Zoarab bid farewell to his two children — a 2-year-old boy, and a girl born two weeks ago — killed in a predawn strike by Israel on their home.
“Just two weeks old. Her name hadn’t even been registered,” said her grandmother, Suzan Zoarab.
Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she cried, “Does he think that by killing these children he will achieve something? Have they succeeded now? Has he achieved what he wants?”
UN vote on hostilities postponed for second day
Washington is currently blocking the UN Security Council from adopting a resolution on the Israel Hamas war.
Two issues are important for the United States. Firstly, it is concerned with the wording “cessation of hostilities”. Second is putting the UN in charge of inspecting trucks to ensure they are actually carrying humanitarian goods.
A vote on the Arab-sponsored resolution, first postponed on Monday, was pushed back again until Wednesday as council members continued intense negotiations to avoid another veto by the United States.
“We’re still working through the modalities of the resolution,” US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday afternoon, when the vote was still set for 5 p.m. local time.
“It’s important for us that the rest of the world understand what’s at stake here and what Hamas did on the 7th of October and how Israel has a right to defend itself against those threats.”
The US asked for more time and the vote is now scheduled to take place after an open council briefing followed by closed consultations on the UN political mission in Afghanistan on Wednesday morning.
The draft resolution on the table Monday morning called for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities,” but this language was watered down in a new draft circulated early Tuesday.
It now “calls for the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
