“OBSCENE DISTORTION”
In Rafah, Palestinians welcomed the UN vote and called for the United States to use its influence on Israel to secure a ceasefire.
Bilal Awad, 63, said Washington must “stand against an attack on Rafah, and support the return of the displaced to their cities”.
Ihab al-Assar, 60, expressed hope that “Israel will comply” with the Security Council.
Israel has labelled its operations “precise operational activities” and said it has taken care to avoid harm to civilians, but aid agencies have voiced alarm about non-combatants caught up in the fighting.
Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said Monday it was battling militants around two hospitals and reported killing about 20 fighters around Al-Amal over the previous day in close-quarters combat and air strikes.
Palestinians living near Al-Shifa, the territory’s main hospital, have reported corpses in the streets, constant bombardment and the rounding up of men who are stripped to their underwear and questioned.
Israel’s military said it had detained about 500 militants “affiliated with” Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group, during its operation at Al-Shifa.
The fighting came as an independent UN-appointed expert, Francesca Albanese, said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” Israel’s actions in Gaza had met the threshold for “acts of genocide”.
Israel rejected Albanese’s report, due to be presented to the UN’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday, as an “obscene inversion of reality”.
Source: CNA
