Israel-Hamas war: Israel says some Hamas fighters have surrendered in northern Gaza

Videos published by Reuters from the southern city of Khan Younis showed buildings engulfed in flames after an Israeli attack. Local media reports showed videos of rescuers and civilians using their hands to pull people from the rubble by the light of flashlights and cellphones. Other images showed patients being treated on bloodied hospital floors.

On Wednesday, UN Secretary General António Guterres had invoked a rarely used rule that allows him to bring to the attention of the Security Council matters that “may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.” Mr Guterres argued that a ceasefire was necessary because of the suffering of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza and the risk that the humanitarian catastrophe there could threaten world stability.

This led to the UN Security Council’s vote on Friday on the resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The United States vetoed it, saying Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas. Israel launched its military assault on Gaza after Hamas, the armed group that controls the enclave, led an attack on Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking 240 hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s two-month air and ground assault on the besieged Gaza Strip has killed at least 15,000 people and possibly thousands more, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Palestinian leaders and Arab countries say Israel’s military campaign is a deeply disproportionate response to October 7.

The US veto of the ceasefire resolution surprised many Gazans who had hoped the airstrikes and their suffering would stop. The day before the Security Council vote on a ceasefire, the Biden administration, Israel’s closest ally, began warning that the Israeli military had not done enough to prevent harm to civilians in Gaza.

“People were optimistic that the war would end,” said Muhammad al-Masri, a local journalist in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. “In recent days we thought America would stop this and give Israel a deadline to end the war,” he added. “But in the end it turned out to be the opposite. It is the one who opposed the ceasefire.”

Mr al-Masri now lives in a tent camp where winter rains have flooded what little shelter people have. On Saturday, he said, Israel “fired two rockets near the shelter where we are staying and many people were killed and injured,” he said.

The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment on reports that it had targeted Rafah after urging civilians in Gaza to take shelter there.

Ahmed al-Qayed, a 31-year-old carpenter, said he had pinned his hopes on finding a UN solution to the conflict so that he and his family could return to Gaza City in the north of the territory.

Along with thousands of other displaced people, Mr al-Qayed said he, his wife and their children lived in a dilapidated tent in Rafah, where the most basic necessities, such as access to a bathroom, were often unavailable.

“Tell America we want to go back to our homes,” he said. ‘What is our fault? We are sick and tired.”

There is a shortage of everything in Gaza, he said, including food and blankets. Like hundreds of thousands of others, they relied on canned food (some of which had expired) and had not eaten fruit or vegetables in weeks. He said he has no money to buy firewood and instead spends his days collecting branches and twigs to keep his family warm.

Abdullah al-Nems, a 41-year-old taxi driver in Rafah, said he had stopped working partly because of the lack of fuel in Gaza and partly because he was too afraid to leave his home because of frequent Israeli airstrikes.

Even at home, he said, he and his family remain afraid of bombs and rockets, which have leveled entire neighborhoods and sometimes killed entire families in one attack, Gaza residents and authorities said.

“My whole life is a horror,” Mr al-Nems said. “Why would my son and daughter stay terrified all day? Why should I remain afraid when I sit at home?”

The war has displaced approximately 85 percent of Gaza’s population, which numbers more than two million Palestinians. Most are sheltering in tent camps, crowded schools and other public buildings. With the onset of winter, the situation has become more bleak by the day, Gazans say.

UN officials say they are struggling to deliver essential goods such as food, medicine and cooking gas to desperate civilians.

“People are talking about how the UN has not even distributed anything that can be eaten to the people sheltering in the schools,” said Mohammed Aborjela, 27, project coordinator at the development organization Youth Without Borders. “The United Nations cannot force Israel to do anything.”

Mr. Aborjela documented daily life and culture in Gaza on his Instagram account before the war. Where he once uploaded videos about coastal cuisine in Gaza, he now posts about the daily struggle to find drinking water and food.

“People all had hopes that the war would end in a few days,” he said. “And everyone is talking about whether it will end before the end of the year.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad reporting contributed.